Celebrating Twyford’s ‘rags to riches’ tale
Twyford: The Polehampton Charity marks its 300th anniversary
A Twyford man made famous through a centuries-old ‘rags to riches’ tale was honoured last week at a reception to mark 300 years of his benevolent fund.
Edward Polehampton, an orphaned and homeless boy who passed through the village in 1666, was shown such kindness by locals that he never forgot the place that helped him.
In his will of 1721, Edward left a large sum of money to Twyford, and an organisation set-up in his name, called The Polehampton Charity, began offering education to poor children and money to struggling families.
Now 300 years later (after suffering a short period of inactivity) The Polehampton Charity is extremely active thanks to the collective drive and vision of its current board of trustees.
Twyford-based professionals still passionately adhere to the original principles and values that the charity was founded on, reaching out to and accepting grant applications from people experiencing hardship, particularly supporting schools and anything with educational merit.
A number of gestures have taken place throughout Twyford to commemorate Edward Polehampton and to spread his message of equality and kindness.
Rulers have been donated to every primary school pupil in the area and a framed print of Edward Polehampton was given to every school as well as a reminder of his values. The original hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.
Working with the Twyford Parish Council, trees will be planted across the village and a trio of ‘chatty benches’ (built to encourage community and conversation) will be donated by the charity to the village.
Finally, one of the charity’s buildings, the Old Boys’ School, has been donated to Twyford and will be used as the village’s new library. Outgoing chairman Andrew Cardy said that they ‘simply couldn’t let 300 years pass without marking it in some way.’
At a reception on October 11 Mr Cardy addressed a room of Twyford dignitaries, local volunteers and businesses, with a heartfelt speech.
“We think it is worthy of a celebration that 300 years ago this
amazing gentleman left his hard earned cash. I’ve been privileged to be one of the trustees for ten years now so you’re all very, very welcome. Thank you all for attending.
“This is a fabulous opportunity for us all to network and communicate and start talking to each other. The one thing that we have all got in common is our passion and our desire and our enthusiasm for the villages of Twyford, Ruscombe and Charvil and that’s really why we’re all here.
“Thank you for your support and help and enthusiasm over the years.”
A vision going forward for the charity is to embrace families and schools in the nearby villages of Charvil and Ruscombe and the handing over of the chairing baton to Amy Goodall-Smith who said on the night: “Our main objective is to support residents in the area that are in need, in hardship or in distress, particularly promoting education within that.
“And we would really like to galvanise support with all those people in the community that are very in touch with the people that might need our help and support so we are able to offer financial support that need our help.
“We don’t need donations.
That’s not what we’re looking for. We are looking for ‘trusted agents’ in the community that could help us identify those residents that need support so that we can help with the cost of school trips or uniforms or calculators and laptops – anything that is educational is really important to us.
“So if there are any families that need our help please do pass them our way. We really want to support the community as much as we can.”