The Fuel Allotment Charity

Reference to allotment in the title of this charity has nothing to do with pieces of land used for the growing of vegetables and the like, but rather it refers to land allotted as compensation for the loss of ancient rights to gather wood and furze for fuel from the common land in Tasburgh when that was enclosed under an Act of Parliament in 1813. Under the terms of that Act the land was to be let and the income used to buy fuel for the poor of the parish.

The pieces of land received under the subsequent Enclosure Award in 1818, were about an acre adjoining the Poor House in Marl Bottom, and approximately a five acre acre block of grazing meadows opposite Tasburgh Grange. The grazing meadows were exchanged in 1905 with the owner of The Grange, Philip Berney Ficklin, in return for about 4 acres of grazing marsh along the River Tas from The Old Horse Shoes to Commerce House and the remaining part of the field on the opposite side of Low Road which the Poor's Land Charity had received in a similar exchange; for further details, see the entry relating to that charity, including the sale of the field to the Depwade Rural District Council in 1971.

In 1976 the trustees sold some of their land in Marl Bottom for £1250 to John Appleton, the owner of the old Poor House which had been renamed Mistletoe Cottage, as additional garden, and then in 2018 they sold a further piece of land for £8,000 to the owners of Mistletoe Cottage, leaving the trustees with about a quarter of an acre on the cottage's western boundary, which they sold in 2020 to the same purchasers for a further £12,000.

In 2014 the trustees had sold to the owner of Commerce House half an acre of the adjoining grazing marsh for £11,000, and in 2021 they sold the remaining 3.5 acres to the owner of Jasmine Cottage for £85,000, meaning that the Charity no longer owns any land but relies solely on investment income.