Testimonials, given freely

Six voices — given in their own words, with their own names.

We do not ask residents or volunteers to provide testimonials. Where they have offered words to us — and have given us permission to publish them — we have set them out here in full, with their first name, age and town. We have made minor edits for length only, and not for sentiment.

A worn leather visitor's book lies open on a table beside a pot of tea and a brass bell.

Mavis Allbright, 84, photographed at her bay window.

Mavis, 84 · Resident, Eure's Row

“It feels like a great kindness from someone who died three centuries before I was born.”

“I had thought a small house would feel like a smaller life. It has not. The trustees met me at my kitchen table on a Wednesday morning. 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. I read a great deal more here than I did. I have made a friend on every side of the courtyard. I am eighty-four and feel, for the first time in many years, well housed.”

Bert, 79 · Resident, Smale's Cottages

“The garden taught me how to sit still. I'd never known anything that asks so little and gives so much.”

“I drove articulated lorries for forty-one years. The first month of retirement nearly finished me; the second nearly finished my wife. When the trustees offered me a cottage at Smale's I said yes before I'd thought about it, and have not thought a hard thought about that decision since. The walled garden, in particular — well. I sit in it on Mondays. I do not know who is more changed: the compost heap or me.”

Elspeth, 88, at her front room window with a book.

Elspeth, 88 · Resident, Smale's Cottages

“I read more here than I have in decades. The library walker visits me last on a Tuesday, and stays the longest.”

“My husband died in the spring of 2021. I had a long lawn I could no longer mow and a house that smelt of nobody. When the trustees met me at the kitchen table, they did not ask whether I could afford it; they asked what I read. I have, in my four years here, finished one hundred and seventy-four books and put down only six. I have taught myself to read R.S. Thomas aloud. The cold frame listens.”

Philippa, 41, in her own kitchen with a mug of tea.

Philippa, 41 · Hearth & Hand befriender, Gobowen

“I came to befriend, and discovered I had been the one taught.”

“I was paired with Margaret in 2022. I had thought two hours a fortnight would feel like a duty; it has felt, instead, like the steadiest hour of my month. Margaret is eighty-one and lived in the same street for sixty-two years before she came to us. She has rearranged most of what I thought I knew about a quiet life. She has also, I should add, taught me how to make stewed apples properly.”

Thomas, 67, in the walled garden with a fork.

Thomas, 67 · Garden volunteer, Trefonen

“You don't volunteer in a garden like this; the garden volunteers you.”

“I have been turning that compost heap since 2017 and intend to manage another nine. The garden behind Eure's Row is not landscaped; it is gardened. There is a difference. You learn it in the first season. The apple step against the south wall is at least eighty years old and we are working on the assumption that we will outlive it; the residents, I think, mostly want us to be wrong about that.”

Cynthia, 58, in her community-nurse uniform on the doorstep of an almshouse.

Cynthia, 58 · Community nurse, Oswestry

“Eure's Row is among the warmest, the quietest, and the best kept housing in the town.”

“As a parish nurse I see a great deal of housing in this town. I have walked into damp, into noise, into homes where I could see a slipped tile from the front step. I have not had any of those experiences at Eure's Row. The trustees take this seriously, and they take it seriously without making a fuss of it. That is — in my line of work — the rarest combination.”