Page 5

Wednesday, 02 March 2005

The Almonry Museum (Page 5)

The Building

In the larger English Benedictine monasteries the communal obligation of assisting the poor was from the tenth century onwards entrusted to one of the brothers known as the almoner. The earliest reference to an almoner at Evesham occurs c. 1214. He was by then administering for the benefit of the poor a considerable income from rents and from the abbot's bakehouses in the Vale of Evesham at which the abbot's customary tenants were compelled to have their bread baked. The almoner was allowed to distribute a tenth of all bread and beer made or bought within the abbey precinct; he had charge of the monks' garden so that he could provide vegetable broth; and he received 90 eggs every year from the abbot's tenants at Aldington (Worcs.). By the 14^th century the almoner at Evesham was required not only to help callers or residents at the abbey but also to seek out and relieve the sick and infirm poor in their own homes.

A building exclusively designated for his work, the almonry, must eventually have been provided within the abbey precinct, probably (as at other houses) near the main gate. The date is not known when that provision was made at Evesham. The earliest references to the Evesham almonry as a building occur shortly before the suppression of the abbey in 1540. In 1535 the abbey was providing food and clothing to the value of £6 a year for six poor people 'in the almonry' and bread and beer to the value of £25 a year was given to the poor 'in the house of the almoner'. At that time boys from the grammar school were also looked after in the building: in the reign of Elizabeth I a John Wylkes stated that he had been 'a scholar in the town of Evesham and did board in the almonry of the ... monastery' in the time of Abbot Clement Wych alias Lichfield (1513-38). At the suppression Henry VIII leased the almonry building to the last abbot, Philip Ballard alias Hawford (1538-40), for the term of his life. The property was then described as 'the lodging or building called the almonry adjoining to the gate at the coming unto the ... late monastery on the north, upon the lord's stable on the south, upon the base court toward the east, and upon the barton gate toward the west, with a garden called the almonry garden, a great court or yard called the almonry court, a kitchen, [and] two stables'.