The Poor's Land Charity

Following the demise of the Meek Charity, the Poor's Lands Charity is the oldest of the village charities. It was also known at various times in the past as the Town Lands Charity and the Feoffment Charity and was originally governed by a Trust Deed dated 25th April 1778, although it seems likely that the charity existed even before then. Indeed in 1773 the Lord of the Manor granted a licence to the inhabitants of Tasburgh to erect a coal house on the waste of the Manor called the Church Hills for the laying in of coals for the use of the poor of the parish on payment of one penny a year. By 1828 the trustees had all died and it was left to William Warren, as the heir of the last surviving trustee, to transfer the charity's lands to new trustees. The property was described as three parcels of land containing 3.5 acres in Tasburgh, nine parcels containing 8.5 acres in Flordon plus 1 acre of land in Stratton St. Michael. One of the pieces of land in Tasburgh was a field adjoining the old churchyard and is now the extension to it.

The tenants of the land in Tasburgh at the time were Isaac Webster of Malthouse Farm (Tasburgh Grange) and Stephen Jacobs of Commerce House. William Gwyn of Tasburgh Hall rented the Stratton land, and in Flordon the tenants were Zac George of Tasburgh Mill, Mary Girdlestone of Rainthorpe Hall, and Sir William Kemp of Mergate Hall, Bracon Ash, with one acre being rented by John Pratt. The average rent was £1.40 an acre and the terms of the 1778 Trust Deed directed that the rents were to be distributed to such poor and deserving inhabitants of the parish of Tasburgh as the trustees thought appropriate. A report into the charities of Norfolk in 1834 recorded that William Gwyn, as one of the trustees, spent the rents in purchasing clothing and blankets which were distributed "indiscriminately amongst the settled poor living in the parish. Each poor family receives some article every year, and great coats are given occasionally but the same persons do not receive them more than once every three years."

Much of the land was held in the form of field strips, a legacy of the old open field system of farming under which villagers were allocated a different strip or strips to farm each year by the Lord of the Manor, thereby ensuring in theory that everyone had a chance to farm some better as well as poorer land, but in practice enabaling him to build up blocks for himself which were then enclosed. Half an acre of one of the strips in Flordon was taken for the building of the railway in the 1840s, and the trustees received in return half an acre of nearby land off Greenways, although the exchange wasn't finally documented until 1870! A plan of the Rainthorpe Estate in 1852 shows the names of adjoining landowners, and the charity's Flordon strips are marked "Tasburgh Town" ie. the Town Lands charity.

In 1877 the Charity Commission established a new Scheme for the running of the charity, replacing the provisions of the 1778 Trust Deed, and then in 1928 the charity was incorporated into Tasburgh United Charities, by which time the holding of lands in Flordon had reduced to 7 acres whilst land in Tasburgh had increased by one and a half acres as a result of an exchange of land with Philip Berney Ficklin in 1905 under which the trustees received the northern half of the field in Low Road adjoining Hill Crest and Hill House in return for their land in Stratton St. Michael, and a strip of land in an adjoining field and a piece of land now forming part of the garden of Tasburgh Grange, both of which would have been part of the land recorded as rented by Isaac Webster in 1828 as part of Malthouse Farm.

Under the Enclosure Award of 1818, the charity's field adjoining the churchyard was exchanged for just over an acre of common land opposite Tasburgh Grange which over time became indistinguishable from adjoining land awarded to the Fuel Allotment Charity. As a result, when the Fuel Allotment Charity exchanged their land opposite Tasburgh Grange with Mr Berney Ficklin in 1905 in return for lands including the southern part of the field received by the Poor's Lands Charity, they included the acre of Poor's land. The error was only discovered when the schedule of lands for the 1928 Scheme for Tasburgh United Charities was being prepared, and so by an order from the Charity Commission the Fuel Allotment Charity was ordered in 1927 to treat an additional acre of the field as belonging to the Poor's Lands Charity thereby increasing its percentage share of the whole to nearly 87%.

At some point between 1818 and 1840, when the map for the Tithe Apportionment Award was prepared, the Poor's Lands Charity also acquired a small piece of land in Grove Lane on which a coalhouse was built to store coal for distribution to the poor, presumably replacing the one built in 1773. By 1928 the first minutes of Tasburgh United Charites show that coal was being delivered direct to recipients' houses by a local coal merchant, Thomas Moy Ltd, and by the time of WW2 the old coalhouse had become a ruin.

In 1951 the trustees sold an acre of land in Flordon for £50 to the Forehoe & Henstead Rural District Council for the building of council houses, and in 1978 the remaining four pieces of land in Flordon were sold to the tenant, Alan King of Laybye Farm Saxlingham Nethergate, for £2750. This included two strips of land running through what is now the Tas Valley Cricket Club's grounds adjoining the Flordon to Newton Flotman road. Before that in 1971, the charity's land in Low Road had been included in a sale to the Depwade Rural District Council also for council houses at a price of £17,500, but following the reorganisation of Local Government in 1974 the land passed to South Norfolk District Council and the plans for further council houses were dropped. The last piece of land belonging to the charity was the site of the old coalhouse on Grove Lane, which was sold to the village playing field. The investment of the various sale proceeds now provides the majority of the income of Tasburgh United Charities.