'New' Walthamstow & Chingford Almshouse Charity
The ‘new’ Walthamstow & Chingford Almshouse Charity (WCAC) today shows a healthy income stream in its first annual results - and plenty of projects to spend that income on. The charity’s main purposes are to provide almshouses, and to make grants for the relief of financial need.
The creation of WCAC has enabled trustees to pursue a long-held objective to redevelop the Ridgers Almshouses at Chingford Mount, which have now been demolished in readiness for the project to begin. The new charity’s first major project will be to redevelop the site with seven self-contained flats, purpose-built for the independent elderly of the 21st century.
Planning permission has been granted for the development of six one-bedroom, two-person flats, and one two-person wheelchair-accessible flat on the site. A wheelchair-accessible communal room has also been included. The flats will be built to lifetime homes standards; trustees are seeking to achieve the highest EcoHomes rating for the development.
Quinquennial building surveys undertaken in late 2005 had highlighted a substantial amount of work required to ensure the continued preservation of the almshouses’ building fabric. The necessary works arising from the survey continued during the year and will demand much of the trustees’ focus for the next few years.
Residents’ social events this year included a day at the seaside in July, a fundraising event for Breast Cancer Care, a Christmas meal with entertainment, along with the usual fish and chip and pub lunches, coffee mornings and video evenings.
With great regret, both Violet (Vi) and Garner Smith retired as trustees during 2006. With Vi serving 45 years as trustee and Garner 25, they had provided an invaluable contribution to the Charity’s predecessor bodies. Vi Smith had also served as Chairman of Trustees for over 20 years. WCAC Chairman, John Cannon, paid tribute to the commitment of his long-serving predecessor, saying that he felt honoured and privileged to be standing in the place long held by Vi and that he would try to continue the outstanding work she had achieved, carrying the Charity forward in the new millennium.
John went on: ‘The updating and streamlining of the new amalgamated charity will enable us to identify - and then to help - our neediest neighbours in a much more effective way.
‘Our original benefactors wouldn’t recognise today’s Chingford or Walthamstow. But, although conditions are quite different, there is no change in the way we continue to fulfil the donors’ generous intentions by serving local people with the same care that the trustees have traditionally shown since the 16th Century. And now we are properly equipped to do just that in another new century.’
