Almshouses Series #028 Lady Susan Smith Multi-Cache

"6 neat houses under 1 roof for 3 aged widows and 3 aged widowers" is Cussans description of these almshouses founded by Lady Susan Smith (the wife of Abel Smith, of Woodhall Park). Abel Smith provided the funds and selected and supported the residents. Do remember this was in 1867 before the Women’s Property Acts of the 1880s. Lady Susan died in 1875. There is a stained glass window to her memory in the local church. The building and the outbuildings were listed by Historic England in 1986. The architect may have been George Devey. He did work for other members of the Smith family including designing Goldings (at Hertford for Robert Smith, a number of members of the aristocracy and the Rothschild family). He kept many drawings and photographs of his work but there is no catalogued record of this building. There is just the chance that it could be one of those listed as unknown but it has not been possible to look at the drawings which are held at Sheffield. He developed an innovatory ‘cottage’ style of domestic architecture based on timber framed structures. The features were distinctive gables, high pitched roofs and tall chimney stacks. He used traditional materials of timber, brick and tile. Historic England calls this the Domestic Revival Style. The original provision was for 7 dwellings. By the time Vyse visited in 1983 that had reduced to 5 then to 4 according to the Historic England citation. A chance contact with one of the estate staff in 2017 provided the information that by then the cottages were let commercially but some at a reduced rate to reflect Lady Susan’s original intentions.

This is a multi cache and IS NOT at the published coordinates.

The cache is a 2ml tube.

At the published coordinates you will find the almshouses. Check these out.

The year written above the top window is ABCD.

Checksum of all digits in the coordinates = 52