Houses that pave the way to heaven (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Houses that pave the way to heaven

This weekend, some of the city's places of succour and refuge throw open their doors, as they did in days of yore. Lesley Bates finds out more about this year's Heritage Open Days.

ALMSHOUSES have an image of piety and virtue, but not all their foundations were built on such solid saintliness. One of Salisbury's oldest establishments owes as much to vice as goodness, if local legend is to believed.

Trinity Hospital was built about 1370, in what was the city's red light district, to provide permanent residence and sustenance for 12 needy persons, and temporary accommodation for a further 18, who could stay for three days or, if sick, until they recovered.

The hospital was founded by another needy soul - one Agnes Bottenham - as a passport to heaven after a life, it was rumoured, funded by her immoral earnings as a brothel-keeper.

Seemingly without irony, she chose the site of a former brothel where "hidden lust, murders and other mortal sins were perpetrated to the downfall of many and the serious jeopardy of souls"1 to build her almshouse.

Little remains of the original medieval building, but Trinity Hospital, with its tranquil paved courtyard and its water pump, which used to supply the whole of Trinity Street, still plays an important role in the administration of many of the remaining almshouses in the city.

Nowadays, it is the administrative heart of the Salisbury City Almshouse and Welfare Charities, which oversees the trust and the 11 almshouses within its remit.

It is the last of medieval almshouses left in the city, but not the oldest.

That honour goes to the independently governed St Nicholas Hospital, in St Nicholas Road, founded in 1215, just beyond the walls of Salisbury cathedral.

Both are among the five almshouses and three workhouses in Salisbury and Wilton, which will be opening their doors to visitors from today until Sunday as part of this year's Heritage Open Days.

Salisbury Civic Society is running a series of guided tours of Frowd's House and Taylor's Almshouse, in Bedwin Street, Trinity Hospital, St Nicholas Hospital, and the College of Matrons, in the Cathedral Close.

The former union workhouses for Salisbury (Church House is now home to the diocesan offices for the diocese of Salisbury, in Crane Street), Alderbury (now Willowcroft Care Home in East Harnham) and Wilton (most recently home to Moody's Removals) will also welcome visitors.

Today's visitors will presumably be better-heeled than those for whom the almshouses were originally built - poor widows, sober spinsters and elderly couples "past labour and children"2 were high in the pecking order - and presumably better behaved.

Frowd's in Bedwin Street, had a list of strict rules for its residents including the exhortation that the inmates be "cleanly in their Persons and Rooms, and are to conduct themselves peaceably to avoid all quarrelling, drunkenness, and other bad conduct which may bring disgrace upon them". Failure to comply would result in fines and expulsion.

Building an almshouse or hospital (the word comes from the Latin hospitum, meaning hospitality) as a penance for past sins might have been the prompt for benefactors such as Agnes, who quickly grasped the idea that one good deed deserves another and were looking for payback as they passed through the Pearly Gates.

But more often than not, almshouse benefactors were to be found among the city's great and good - such people as Bishop Seth Ward (Matrons College), William Hussey and Edward Frowd.

Some of them, together with other city 'good eggs' such as John Ivie, Henry Fawcett, Andrew Bogle Middleton and Benjamin Bankes, are to be highlighted in a walk - Benefactors and Other Illustrious Citizens, led by Salisbury blue badge guides Penny May and Margaret Smith.

It is one of three specially devised walks - others being Almshouses and Places of Care, in Wilton, and Salisbury's Old Hospitals and Other Refuges, organised by Wessexplore Tourist Services' guides Don Cross and John Cutland.

All the walks and tours are free but some have to be pre-booked through the tourist information centre in Fish Row, Salisbury.

1. Caring, A History Of City Charities, by the Salisbury Local History Group. 2. The Will of Christopher Eyre, who founded Eyre's Hospital.