Almshouse trust · Oswestry · Reg. 220042

Ten doorways have stayed open on Beatrice Street for three hundred and fifty years.

The Eure and Smale Charity is a small almshouse trust in Oswestry. Since 1672, twelve neighbours at a time have lived rent-free in our cottages, looked after by trustees who serve without payment, kept warm in winter by a coal allowance written into our governing scheme.

Support the Repair Fund Read our history
10
Almshouses
12
Residents
353yrs
Continuous care
The brick-and-tile facade of Eure's Row almshouses on Beatrice Street, Oswestry, photographed in low autumn light.
This morning

A new coal delivery for No. 7 Eure's Row; Mavis (84) opens the back gate to let the driver through.

0 Almshouses under our care
0 Charitable income · 2024/25
0 Hearth & Hand befrienders
0 Trustees, unpaid
What we do, plainly

A small charity, doing one thing carefully for a very long time.

We do not run campaigns. We do not commission research. We do, simply, repair the roofs and warm the rooms of ten old houses in Oswestry, so that twelve neighbours have somewhere quiet to live out their later years.

Housing

Ten dwellings, kept warm.

Our governing scheme of 21 December 1979 charges the trustees with one task: that the residents of these almshouses live well. Heating, repairs, garden upkeep, a roof that does not leak — these are the things we attend to.

Companionship

Visits on Wednesday afternoons.

Hearth & Hand pairs each resident with a local befriender, who visits at least once a fortnight. Some come with the parish newspaper, some with stewed apples, some with nothing but a chair and an hour.

Care of place

A garden tended by hand.

The walled garden behind Eure's Row is worked by six volunteers from across the Vale of Oswestry. They keep the apple step, the cold frame, and the long flower border that runs the length of the wall.

Six standing programmes

The named work that fills our small year.

All programmes
A blue-painted front door at one of the Eure's Row almshouses with a brass number 4 plate.
Programme 01

The Almshouses

Ten dwellings, six on Eure's Row and four at Smale's Cottages. Twelve residents currently in residence; the longest has been with us since 2008.

Read more
A roofer kneels on a slated roof patching a slipped tile above Eure's Row.
Programme 02

The Repair Fund

We are halfway towards the £45,000 needed to re-slate the south-facing roof of Eure's Row. The slates are Welsh, the same as those laid in 1748.

Read more
Two women sit at a kitchen table sharing tea, one a befriender, one an almshouse resident.
Programme 03

Hearth & Hand

Fourteen befrienders, drawn from Oswestry, Gobowen and Trefonen, who visit each resident at least once a fortnight from October to May.

Read more
An old apple tree espaliered against a high red-brick garden wall behind Eure's Row.
Programme 04

The Garden at Eure's Row

The walled garden has been worked since at least 1881, when an Oswestry directory first listed a gardener attached to the trust. Six volunteers tend it today.

Read more
Sacks of coal stacked beside a back door on Eure's Row, with the morning frost still on them.
Programme 05

The Winter Coal Allowance

Three deliveries between Michaelmas and Lady Day, written into our scheme since 1979 and unchanged in spirit since the original Smale endowment of 1748.

Read more
A modest bookshelf in a parish-hall side room with paperbacks and a small reading lamp.
Programme 06

The Trustees' Library

A small circulating library of donated paperbacks and large-print editions, kept in the side room at St Oswald's and walked round each Tuesday by our librarian.

Read more
The Eure's Row Roof Appeal

£45,000 to re-slate the south side of Eure's Row.

After three hundred winters and a wet autumn in 2024, the slate on numbers 1 to 6 has begun to lift. We are working with a Shropshire roofing firm to relay the slates by hand, matching the originals from the Penrhyn quarry where we can.

Raised · £27,400 Target · £45,000
Give to the Repair Fund
A Shropshire roofer at work on the slate roof of Eure's Row in early-morning light.
Volunteer roles

Three quiet ways to help, all close to home.

All volunteer roles
Two hours a fortnight

Hearth & Hand Befriender

Visit one resident at a regular hour each fortnight, from October to May. We pair you carefully and you may decline at any time.

Tuesday mornings

Garden Volunteer

Help us look after the walled garden behind Eure's Row. No experience required; the regulars are very kind and the tea is endless.

One afternoon a quarter

Library Walker

Take a tote bag of paperbacks round to each almshouse on the last Tuesday of the month. Bring a chair if you'd like to read to anyone.

Three stories from this year

The almshouses, in three voices.

We have asked three of our neighbours to speak of their year — what has been quiet, what has been difficult, what has been kind.

Mavis, 84, sits in a sunny bay window of her almshouse in Oswestry.
Story · Oswestry

Mavis, 84 — “I'd lived in the same street for sixty-two years.”

When Mavis moved into No. 3 Eure's Row in 2019, she'd never lived outside her childhood postcode. Her befriender Lucy now writes letters to her grandson on her behalf.

Read the story
Bert, 79, leans on a garden fork in the walled garden behind Eure's Row.
Story · Trefonen

Bert, 79 — “The garden taught me how to sit still.”

Bert had been a long-haul driver for forty years before retirement. The almshouse garden took him by surprise: “I'd never known anything that asks so little and gives so much.”

Read the story
Elspeth, 88, holds an open book at her almshouse window with thin lace curtains.
Story · Whittington

Elspeth, 88 — “I read more here than I have in decades.”

Elspeth came to Smale's Cottages in 2021 after her husband's death. The library walker visits her last on a Tuesday, and stays the longest.

Read the story
Eight quiet years of accounts

Repair and resident spending, 2017 to 2024.

Our outgoings are small, slow, and almost entirely fabric: slate, lime mortar, oak window-frames, coal, and the small heating allowances written into our 1979 scheme. The 2024 figure includes preparatory work for the Eure's Row roof.

Source · annual accounts filed with the Charity Commission, charity 220042.

In the diary

Three small gatherings this season.

All events
24
May

Spring Open Doors at Eure's Row

Sat · Eure's Row, Beatrice Street, Oswestry

One afternoon a year, the almshouse courtyard is open to neighbours. There is tea, a small plant sale, and a chance to speak to the trustees.

Book a place
18
Jun

Midsummer Tea for Befrienders

Wed · The Garden, Eure's Row · 14.30

A small thank-you to our fourteen Hearth & Hand befrienders. Cake from the church-hall kitchen and a short address by Reverend Darlington.

29
Sep

Michaelmas Trustees' Meeting (open quarter-hour)

Mon · St Oswald's Side Room · 18.45

For fifteen minutes at the start of each quarter's meeting, members of the public may attend and ask questions of the trustees.

News & Stories

Three pieces from the office.

All news
The blue front door of an almshouse with brass numerals, photographed in soft morning light.
14 April 2026 · Long read

A doorway still open: Mavis at No. 3.

A short essay on what it means to live a long life in one street, and then to be asked to leave it.

Read
A volunteer wheels a small barrow of mulch along a flint path between the almshouses.
04 March 2026 · Essay

The quiet work of Monday mornings.

A morning with Bert, our retired long-haul driver, and the wheelbarrow he has come to consider an old friend.

Read
A weathered cold frame in the walled garden with the morning frost still inside.
21 January 2026 · Reflection

What the garden knows about waiting.

On Elspeth's first winter at Smale's Cottages, and the apple tree she has decided to outlast.

Read
Voices from the trust

Things our neighbours and volunteers have said.

I had thought a small house would feel like a smaller life. It has not. It feels, instead, like a great kindness from someone who died three centuries before I was born.

Mavis, 84 · Resident, Eure's Row

You sit in that walled garden long enough and you begin to feel as old as the bricks. I mean that fondly. It's the first time in my life I haven't been in a hurry.

Bert, 79 · Resident, Smale's Cottages

The trustees came to see me before I moved in. They did not ask whether I could afford it; they asked what I read, and whether I liked a cold room or a warm one.

Elspeth, 88 · Resident, Smale's Cottages

I came to befriend, and discovered I had been the one taught. Two hours a fortnight has rearranged most of what I thought I knew about a small life lived well.

Philippa, 41 · Hearth & Hand befriender, Gobowen

You don't volunteer in a garden like this; the garden volunteers you. I have been turning that compost heap for nine years and intend to manage another nine.

Thomas, 67 · Garden volunteer, Trefonen

As a parish nurse I see a great deal of housing in this town. Eure's Row is among the warmest, the quietest, and the best kept. The trustees take this seriously.

Cynthia, 58 · Community nurse, Oswestry

Partners and neighbours