On the 14th June 2024, Mrs de Lannoy and Haven Homes Almshouse Charity celebrated its 150th anniversary. The almshouse charity was set up in 1874 to help local, more elderly people and those from further afield who have too often fallen on hard times find shelter with a safe and secure place to live independently.
The celebration was held at All Saints Church, with a service of thanks-giving conducted by Rev. Steve Rees and supported by Father Edward Dowler Archdeacon of Hastings and Priest in Charge of St Johns the Evangelist, followed by afternoon tea.
On the day, residents, trustees and officers and many others closely associated with the almshouses, together with the Deputy Lieutenant of East Sussex, Amanda Hamblin, the vice chairman of Wealden District Council, Councillor Gavin Blake-Coggins, the Mayor of Crowborough, Matthew Street, together with our local MP, Nus Ghani attended the celebration. The Almshouse Association was represented by Julian Marczek.
The chairman of the trustees, Bob Bailey, spoke of the enormous benefit offered by almshouses giving many elderly residents independent living and the comfort of their own home. He outlined the background and history of the local almshouses and especially the merger between Mrs de Lannoy and Haven Homes Almshouse Charities’ in 2017 enabling the charities’ combined funding to finance the latest almshouse opened in 2018, known as Swift House, situated in Walshes Road. He also highlighted the good fortune of a second benefactor to Crowborough, Miss Georgina Swift, who generously endowed two further almshouses in 1905 and 1909 in Beeches Road and East Beeches, being the Haven Homes Charity.
Julian Marczek gave an overview of the work of the Almshouse Association and of the current need for almshouse accommodation across the United Kingdom, a need that stretched back close on one thousand years. He also stated that today, following recent research, it had been established that residents living in almshouses had in the main enhanced life expectancy.
One of the highlights was the reading of a poem [right] specially written by Peter Jackson and read by one of the residents; Mary Corny. Mary, dressed in late nineteenth century apparel, brought to life the history of the Mrs de Lannoy Almshouse.
The charity, with a strong Christian ethos, draws its trustees from All Saints and St John the Evangelist and other local churches.
Today, including Mrs de Lannoy Cottages, there are four small almshouses in Crowborough accommodating twenty residents. If you would like to know more, please do visit the charity’s website at crowboroughalmshouses.org
POEM:
Sanctuary – 150 years of Mrs de Lannoy Cottages
Four gables, proud on Beacon Road,
proclaim their birth: 1, 8, 7, 4.
Today, the heart of Crowborough presses round:
house agents, pizzas, chapel, doctors, pub;
hedge filtering out the daily traffic’s hum
and evening visits from the kebab van.
It wasn’t always so, when Mrs D,
replete with widow’s unexpected wealth,
endowed this house, this sanctuary,
raised high upon a Wealden ridge.
A refuge, shelter, second chance
for “inmates with a Protestant belief”.
Not all was perfect in that quiet retreat.
The trail to toilets down the garden path
now rectified by all mod cons
and water paid for, faults repaired
beneath the watchful eye of those
who oversee and delegate such things.
So here they came, expectant eyed,
and found a welcome they did not presume;
in hugs, warm words and friendships dear.
A garden to bring peace, a plot to tend
and, more than this, a hint of springtime
in the autumn of their days.
Still stands that need, and still they come
as widows, spinsters, married pairs
to live content in Beeches’ Haven Homes
or in Swift House, the latest of the line.
A time of rest before the evening dims.
A shaft of sunlight before shadows fall.
– Peter Charles Jackson June 2024
