A summary of Volume XXI [Return to publications page]

The Hellard almshouses and other Stevenage charities, 1482-2005
edited by Margaret Ashby

Records relating to the Stevenage Almshouse Trust began in 1482. It was in that year that a covenant was drawn up by which John Hykman of St Albans, Thomas Gynne of Stevenage and John Huckle of Stevenage transferred a pightle of land called Gleviscroft, at Woollenwick Green, to Stephen Hellard, rector of Stevenage, Walter Smyth, chaplain, and William Green. The purpose of the gift was to provide a rental income that would be used towards building and maintaining almshouses. When Hellard died in 1506 he bequeathed to the town 'All Christian Souls House, which house I have built for the habitation of three poor folk without any rent therefore to be paid so long as the said house does or shall endure'. The Almshouse Trust has operated continuously since then and celebrates its quincentenary in 2006, the year following publication of this volume.

By the mid-nineteenth century the affairs of a number of other small charities were being managed by the Hellard Almshouse trustees. Churchwarden Rowland Berkeley's book (1855) contains long lists of people entitled to receive relief in money or kind. It also includes records of the timber-framed former workhouse at 2 Letchmore Road, which had been acquired by the parish in 1773 but had become redundant in 1836, after the new Union workhouse was built at Hitchin. The Stevenage building continued in parish ownership until 1957. In 1909 the Stevenage Consolidated Charities Trust was formed, combining the Hellard Almshouse Trust and eight other small charities. In 1946 the small village of Shephall, some 3 miles south of the town, was included within the designated area for development and subsequently became, like Old Stevenage itself, a 'neighbourhood' of the New Town. Shephall's charities have been added to those of Stevenage and are also administered under the Trust. All documents dated before 1909 have been transferred to the Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies; later documents, including a complete run of minutes from 1909 to the present day, are held by the Trustees in Stevenage.

The proposed volume will contain transcripts of all manuscript documents dating from 1482 to c.1940 and extracts and summaries of significant events between 1940 and 2005, such as sales of land and plans for improvements to the almshouses. (Some twentieth-century records will necessarily be omitted to avoid embarrassment to the descendants of persons mentioned.) These charity records provide the names and occupations of many townsfolk, not only trustees but also the poor and other inhabitants. They give an insight into the financial management of such institutions. Their details of earlier landholdings in Stevenage are particularly important because the development of the New Town obliterated much of the ancient landscape and its connections with the past. For example, early-modern documents relating to the 'Almshouse lands' pinpoint exactly when the name of the lost Domesday manor of Woollenwick changed to Symonds Green, its current name. The Trust's archive is a rich, previously untapped source for research into the community of Stevenage and its surrounding district, which this publication will render more accessible to both local historians and to those from further afield with an interest in charities and poor relief.

© 2004 - Hertfordshire Record Society.
Registered charity number: 293259
E-mail: info@hrsociety.org.uk