Newnham: Charities

CHARITIES.

James Woollin (d. 1604) by his will gave £5 in trust for the parish poor. (fn. 1) The capital may have been added to the parish stock by 1683, when the churchwardens held £17 and the overseers £8 8s., sums which had been given long before by unknown donors and which were transferred each year from the outgoing to the incoming officers. (fn. 2) The sums may later have been lost in the general expenditure of the parish. Thomas Kirke (d. 1640), mayor of Newnham in 1608, gave 8s. a year for the poor besides 2s. a year for church repairs. Elizabeth Keen (d. c. 1678) gave £5 in trust for the poor, but by 1683 her executors had paid nothing. (fn. 3) Both charities were recorded c. 1703 (fn. 4) but had evidently been lost by 1828. (fn. 5) James Jocham of Bristol by will dated 1764 gave £1,000 stock in reversion, charged with £3 3s. a year for sermon charities, towards clothing 15 poor boys of Newnham, any residue to be used as a lying-in charity. In 1828 the endowment yielded £33 16s., and in the mid 20th century was represented by £1,188 of 2½ per cent. stock. Samuel Hawkins (d. 1805) by his will gave £200, part of the income for a sermon charity, £1 1s. a year for bread, and any residue for the servants of named persons and their descendants. In 1828 part of the income of £7 12s. was distributed among seven servants. The charity was regulated by Schemes of 1899 and 1929 and an Order of 1935, directing it to the general benefit of the poor; the capital was £282 of 2½ per cent. stock. John Harvey Ollney by will dated 1836 gave, for coal and blankets, a sum later represented by £324 of 2½ per cent. stock. James Cowmeadow by will proved 1873 gave £100 for the aged poor, which was invested in £108 of 2½ per cent. stock. William Rudge Mayo by will proved 1914 gave £100 for the poor, which was invested in £106 of 3½ per cent. stock. (fn. 6) In 1968 the income from the charities for the poor was distributed mainly in the form of vouchers. (fn. 7)