Reference
P83/25/78
Title
Memoranda on Stotfold Charities to incoming vicar, Rev.A.A.Ellis from his predecessor
Date free text
1860
Production date
From: 1860 To: 1860
Scope and Content
including:
- urging recipient to “make yourself master of the particulars of these charities and of details of management during 1860”;
“Mr.[William] Hill is an admirable accountant and faithful in his duties but he has often been most strangely disordered during the year”;
- possession of the deeds to the Boys’ Endowed School and lands connected with it, almshouses and Parish Clerk’s residence;
- total stock currently about £11,800;
- notes on Endowed School master: “Mr.Hill has been an admirable master, the founder of the school was his patron and left him property producing more than £200 per annum”, he made the school more available to the poor than previously but had lately suffered “strange disorders which rumour ascribes to intemperance…he has been actually insane for a few days at a time”; churchwarden Mr.Bowman connected by marriage to Mr.Hill;
- Endowed Boys’ School: in control of vicar and churchwardens; school principles laid down but no regulations had ever been made;
- National Girls & Infants Schools: only confined to girls by will of manager; no management clauses and vicar sole manager; school supported by “children’s’ pence”, subscriptions and endowments amounting to £59/16/6 per annum plus dividend of £250 for building or apprenticeship purposes;
- National Girls’ School mistress: Miss Travis very faithful, conscientious and diligent but her teaching powers and method were defective but have improved; School benefited from apprenticeship fund with a dividend of nearly £1,000; Catherine Joy and Elizabeth Turner were pupil teachers in their fourth year and received a gratuity;
- attendance of children at Sunday School and church: children of dissenting parents allowed to absent themselves but are taught the Church catechism in school; unbaptised children not allowed to say they had received their names in baptism and Methodist children not allowed to say godfathers and godmothers named them;
- custom to give John Paten and William Sharp a sovereign each at Christmas from the School account for work in the Sunday School;
- Sunday School met in National School;
- Clothing Club supported partly by subscription and partly by grant varying according to need;
- Vicarage Club a clothing club maintained entirely by vicar for poor people in Stotfold who had no legal settlement there and who were married;
- difficult to prevent clothing clubs subscribers buying clothes in summer, or grocery and not being able then to but clothes in winter; subscriptions paid weekly in arrear; tradesmen associated were Elsworth of Stotfold and Routledge and Hine of Baldock [Hertfordshire];
- a Sunday School Clothing Club also existed
Level of description
item