Title:
WILLIAM BERMAN'S TRUST
Level: Category
Charity records
Level: Fonds
WILLIAM BERMAN'S TRUST
Scope and Content:
The records deposited relate almost exclusively to the period before the charity's move to Essex.
Dates of Creation:
1848-1956
Admin History:
William Berman (d.1703) was Chaplain of St Thomas' Hospital, Southwark, and was ejected from the living in 1662 following the Act of Uniformity. He built and endowed almshouses for eight poor women on land adjoining his house in Hoxton Square, Shoreditch, Middlesex. For further biographical details see A.G. Matthews, Calamy Revised (1934) p.45).

The almshouses were founded under a trust deed in 1700. Provision was also made for donations to poor Christian Ministers and persons being educated for Christian Ministry, and for educational and general charitable purposes. A scheme for the management of the charity was established by the Charity Commissioners in 1871.

New almshouses and other properties were built by the Trust in Kingsland Road, Hoxton, Middlesex, in 1845 (see D/Q 35/1). In the mid-nineteenth century property belonging to the Trust comprised numbers 1-34 Caroline Place, school house and houses in Basing Place, numbers 1 and 2 Basing Square, Basing House and other properties in Kingsland Road, houses and land part of the Asylum for the Insane, and the Jews Burial Ground, all in Hoxton; land (43 acres) in Waltham Holy Cross; messuage in Tannington, Suffolk; and premises in Middleton One Row, County Durham. Six of the cottages in Caroline Place were destroyed an enemy bomb, 13 October 1940. The remaining cottages in Caroline Place, and the almshouses and cottages in Basing Place and Square were destroyed by enemy action, 6 August 1944 (see D/Q 35/1). The almshouses were rebuilt in 1953 to form Berman's Close, Hanging Hill Lane, Hutton, Brentwood.
Acquisition Source:
Deposited in the Essex Record Office in 1976.
Related Unit of Description:
For an abstract of title of William Berman's Trust to land (field-names given) in Waltham Holy Cross, reciting 1819-1874, see D/DJg B77. This recites among other things (i) will of William Berman, 1 October 1700; (ii) conveyance (lease and release) 30, 31 October 1700 whereby Berman conveyed messuage and lands in Waltham Holy Cross to Robert Hackshaw, William Eeles and Joseph Watts upon certain trusts; (iii) death of William Berman, 7 October 1703; (iv) sale of part of land in Waltham Holy Cross to War Department in 1862, and sale of remainder to tenant Peter Mills of The Grange, Sewardstone, Waltham Holy Cross in 1874.