Thomas Seckford - Benefactor of the Aged and the Poor
The Dispensary
Soon after the 1861 scheme was approved a dispensary was opened in a room at the Hospital. It provided "medical advice and medicines to the residents of the Hospital and Almshouses and to those inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood who could not afford to pay for treatment – but only if they were not receiving support from the parish" The Dispensary was also available to those who were nominated by “subscribers” This facility was used by some employers to provide medical treatment for their employees. The cost for each person nominated was 10s 6d per annum.
In 1876 the Dispensary was moved into the house in Seckford Street which had previously been occupied by the Free Grammar School. Finally, in 1886, a vacant plot adjacent to this house was used for a custom built Dispensary (erected at a cost of £1500). There were two wards named Victoria - after the Queen - and Dorothy - after the last of the Seckfords.
The Dispensary continued to provide medical services to the poor of Woodbridge and the neighbouring parishes until the introduction of the National Health Service in 1948. It was then used as the HQ of the Woodbridge Red Cross until 1974 and it has since been converted to private flats.
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The Dispensary built on Seckford Street in 1886.
The Lending Library and the Public Pump and Drinking Fountain
The Seckford Lending Library started as a few volumes occupying some shelves in the shop of a hairdresser on Market Hill. (This shop was demolished, in 1884, to create what is now the memorial garden.) In 1869 the Library was moved to a house on St John's Hill. Six years later £500 was spent on fitting out part of the former Grammar School on Seckford Street as a library. In 1900 the Charity was allowing the Library committee to spend £50 per annum on new books and they were "at much pains to exclude all novels of a merely sensational character or of any approaching to an immoral tendency".
The rooms above the Library were eventually used as a reading room and as committee and games rooms by members of the "Seckford Reading Room and Social Club". This had a wide membership and the subscriptions for members ranged from 4s per annum for individuals to 10s 6d for families. By 1951 the Seckford Library was also a branch of the East Suffolk County Council and the Seckford library was the reference section. The reference section closed in April 1963 and the library moved to a new site in Oak Lane in July 1970.
The public pump and drinking fountain, or both, “for the use and convenience of the poor inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood” was erected on the Market Hill in 1877. Its design was based on the hats worn by Queen Victoria. The fountain had “a trough continually filled with water, for the comfort and convenience of dogs, horses and cattle passing through the town”.
From 1869 to 1970 the library was in part of the building on Seckford Street which had formerly been used by the Woodbridge Grammar School.
From 1908 until 1975 the Hospital had to manage on a fixed income from the assets held by the School. This income was increased from £2,000 in 1908, to £3,000 in 1957 and to £4,000 in 1967. During this period the number of residents remained constant.
In 1975 the Seckford Charity announced its intention to provide "a care unit and ancillary services" to increase the charity's contribution to the community of Woodbridge. A sum of £150,000 was set aside for this purpose. The proposed care unit, Jubilee House, was occupied in June 1978. It was designed to house the more physically frail residents and to provide a social centre for the whole Seckford Hospital complex. Jubilee House also provides a limited Day Centre for other residents of Woodbridge.
In April 1980 an offer of £825,000 was accepted for nearly all the remaining Clerkenwell properties. An investment portfolio was created to sustain the Seckford Charity in the years ahead. By 1987 the value of the investment portfolio stood at £5,000,000. The properties owned by the charity were insured for replacement purposes at a combined value of £20,000,000.
In 2005 a major refurbishment of the Seckford Almshouses was started to bring accommodation up to modern standards and make it suitable for wheelchair users. This work has not changed the exterior of the almshouses.
Jubilee House is set back from The Hospital. The entrance to it can be seen in the centre of this photograph.