On July 4th Eric Jackson spoke about the history of alms-houses, with particular reference to Pontefract, which has a long history and an abundance of them!

Providing ‘Alms’ was part of all major religious doctrines, and providing material aid to the poor and destitute has occurred in the UK since medieval times. Many monasteries like Fountains Abbey provided this via ‘hospitiums’, which were used for the reception of guests or travellers.

With the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century, these resources were largely lost, but rich landowners built alms-houses for their retired workers, and local merchants endowed small alms-houses to help the ageing and the sick of the parish.

With the Industrial Revolution, extremely rich industrialists like Titus Salt provided whole villages of alms-houses for their workers and ex-workers – along with fairly paternalistic rules of required behaviour!

Today’s Welfare State aims to avoid anyone becoming poor and destitute, but thanks to legacies going back nearly a thousand years, there are still 1700 alms-houses organisations continuing this work, and housing some 36 thousand people across the U.K.