Twenty-seven households, four lanes, one financial year.
A candid, plain-English account of what our four small programmes reached in the parish of Aubourn with Haddington between April 2024 and March 2025.
Eight quiet years, plotted simply.
The bars below show households reached each year, drawn from our minute book. The dip in 2020–21 was the first lockdown, when many of the visits we usually make to older parishioners were not possible.
'Households reached' counts a household once even if it received more than one grant in the year. Our largest single year remains 2022–23 at twenty-six. Source: Estate Charity of Sir Christopher Nevile minute book and annual returns to the Charity Commission, 2017–25.
Where £1,586 went this year.
Down to the nearest fifty pounds. No category bundles more than four households; all numbers reconcile to our filed annual return.
Kitchen-Table Grants — £812 across 14 households
- £210 · same-week boiler repair for a parishioner in her late seventies on a Sunday afternoon in January.
- £175 · contribution to a funeral cost for a household that had just lost an elderly father.
- £160 · cooker replacement for a young family with two children under five, two weeks before half-term.
- £90 · bus fares to a fortnight of hospital appointments in Lincoln for a parishioner recovering from a small stroke.
- £77 · vet bill for a working dog belonging to a single parent in the parish.
- Plus nine further grants of between £40 and £75 covering fuel-meter top-ups, school-uniform contributions, school-trip costs, and a contribution towards a glasses prescription for a parishioner waiting on an NHS appointment.
The Summers Bursaries — £450 across three young people
- £200 · Tom, 19, of Haddington — first set of stonemason's chisels and a tool roll, for his apprenticeship at a yard near Lincoln.
- £150 · Aisha, 18, of Aubourn — work shoes, knife roll and college bus pass for her first term at a Lincolnshire catering college.
- £100 · Megan, 20, of South Hykeham — uniform contribution and travel costs for her first year as a healthcare assistant placement.
Quiet Hour — £198 across six older parishioners
- Six small monthly stipends, between £20 and £45 each, paid to befrienders or directly towards taxi fares, hairdresser visits and Sunday lunches across the year.
The Parish Wellbeing Fund — £126 across four households
- £60 · stair-rail and fitting for an older parishioner in Aubourn recovering from a hip operation.
- £36 · kettle-tipper for a parishioner with restricted hand movement.
- £20 · hearing-loop hire for the December carol service at St Peter's.
- £10 · large-print hymn books for the village hall set, for use at memorial services and the harvest tea.
Total expenditure on grants and direct payments: £1,586. Plus £nil paid in administration costs (trustees serve unpaid; the audit fee was waived this year by our auditor as a courtesy to a small charity).
A small list of lanes.
Our area of benefit, defined in our 1979 scheme of administration, is the ancient parish of Aubourn with Haddington and the immediately surrounding parishes. Below are the named settlements where grants have been paid in the last three years.
- Aubourn
- Haddington
- South Hykeham
- North Hykeham (parts within the parish boundary)
- Bassingham (immediate neighbour)
- Thurlby (immediate neighbour)
- Norton Disney
- Stapleford
- Eagle (occasional, by trustee discretion)
Six named partners in the parish and around it.
We sit alongside, not in front. These are the organisations whose work we most often complement or co-fund.
A fuller account of each partnership is on the partnerships page.
The point is not the number of households reached. The point is whether a kettle that wouldn't boil on a Sunday afternoon was boiling again by tea-time on the Monday. From the Chair's introduction to the 2024–25 annual report