‘An unsatisfactory form of charity’, or ‘a touchstone of concern for life-cycle poverty’?

This book set out to examine early modern almshouses within the wider context of the range of welfare provision available in early modern England. Although historians of the late medieval period have lately included almshouses as part of the range of provision available to meet the needs of the poor, post-Reformation almshouses have generally been viewed as operating outside the framework of statutory poor relief in England, making little contribution towards the support of the genuinely poor and needy. The standard portrayal of the almshouse is thus of a quaint but largely irrelevant institution, providing care and shelter for a small number of respectable, privileged elderly people, participants in a living tableau of traditional beneficence among attractive heritage buildings. This cosy image proved to be remarkably enduring, and is only very recently becoming subject to challenge. Many of the examples in this book, nevertheless, demonstrate the remarkable diversity of early modern almshouses, and how far removed from the conventional portrayal the majority of them were.

The ‘comfortable and positive image’ of almshouse life has recently been revised by Tomkins, and the continuum of experience she describes in relation to eighteenth-century almshouse life applies equally to other features of early modern almshouses. These include, for instance, the many variations in the form and function of foundations; in the governance arrangements; and in the social and economic standing of the occupants. At one end of this continuum sit the stereotypical foundations described above: the well-known, wealthy institutions such as the Lord Leycester Hospital at Warwick or Trinity Hospital, Greenwich, established by high-status individuals in grand or interesting buildings, providing a comfortable, well-ordered existence for a carefully selected group of privileged almspeople. Often such institutions were incorporated and largely self-governing, admitting almspeople who were not necessarily destitute, or those who came from outside the immediate locality, and operating independently of the statutory welfare framework. At the opposite end of the continuum would be found simple, unendowed rows of cottages, such as the Bleachfield and Priory almshouses in Alcester, Warwickshire that were donated by better-off parishioners and townspeople, managed by the parish officers, inhabited rent free by a small number of local poor people and with no overt rules or communal life.