Wantage Town Lands Governors Working Party
The Wantage Town Lands Governors administer a number of separate charities, mostly concerned with providing almshouses for elderly or needy local people.
The Mill Street properties were built between 1868 and 1871.
They are Grade II listed buildings. To the Governors of Wantage Town Lands,
a body corporate which had been created by charter in 1597, was given the
task of managing the Mill Street and other almshouses, subject to the terms
of charitable endowments gifted in the mid-Victorian era.
The Governors maintain the alsmhouses and strive for the comfort and wellbeing
of their residents. Great improvements in channels of communication have
been recently achieved by the appointment of an almoner to visit residents
regularly and address their concerns. However, beyond the responsibilities
of accounts, repairs and legal obligations, the Governors are always prepared
to get their hands dirty, with work parties clearing gardens or houses when
problems are beyond the abilities of residents. The Governors are all unpaid
volunteers drawn from the community of Wantage and its neighbouring parishes.
They are assisted by a part-time clerk.
Originally the almshouses were for "poor persons", "natives
of the town and borough of Wantage, or inhabitants of twenty years' standing,
such poor persons to have been housekeepers there for fourteen years at
the least, or widows of any such housekeepers."
Currently all eight almshouses are occupied and there is a sizeable waiting
list. The exacting terms of the original indenture have been tempered to
fit local needs for the twenty-first century. The almshouses now provide
homes for people of at least 50 years of age, with links to Wantage, for
whom local house prices and rental costs are prohibitively expensive.