Housing the Poor – Cambridge Alms Houses

On Tuesday 10 January 2023 Mill Road History Society hosted a Zoom talk by Evelyn Lord on the subject of the Cambridge Alms Houses. An alms house is a house founded by a charity offering accommodation to poor people. Cambridge is fortunate in having a number of these surviving today with sources that enable us to look at the history of these foundations. Using a chronological narrative structure this talk asks the following questions – what was the motivation of the benefactors who founded the alms houses, how were these funded, who could live in an alms house and how were they maintained, was the accommodation in the alms houses better than elsewhere, and finally how do alms houses fit in with national policies on poverty? In the course of the talk we will meet the alms men and women and those who looked after them. Before retirement Evelyn Lord was Director of the University of Cambridge Masters in Local History. She is now the chair of the Cambridgeshire Association for Local History, convenor of the Landscape and Local History Research Group, on the editorial committee of the Cambridgeshire Records Society, and on the Cambridgeshire Archives advistory group. https://www.millroadhistory.org.uk