Look around the town almshouse given a complete makeover
A Wiltshire almshouse has been given a new lease of life ahead of welcoming another beneficiary.
Mayor of Trowbridge Cllr Graham Hill inspected the improvements at one of Lady’s Brown’s Cottage Homes with Cllr Glyn Bridges, the chairman of Trowbridge Almshouses Trust and fellow trustees.
Cllr Bridges said: “The cottage has been given a complete makeover, with a new kitchen, bathroom, central heating, carpets and flooring.
“We have done as much as we can to make it pleasant for the next tenant, who are known as beneficiaries.”
The recently renovated cottage was one of six originally built in Polebarn Road by Wiltshire’s former High Sheriff Sir William Roger Brown in memory of his late wife Sarah who died on December 6 1899.
Sir Roger, a wealthy Victorian mill owner and clothier, built and endowed two blocks of almshouse cottages in her memory to house six widows.
Known as Lady Brown's Cottage Homes, they have been altered to make five dwellings. Pevsner describes their style as "deliberately rustic, many-chimneyed and many-gabled".
Sir Roger, who was High Sheriff of Wiltshire in 1898-99, also donated Trowbridge Town Hall and the land on which the Newtown Primary School was built.