Programmes & initiatives

Four named undertakings, each small enough to fit on a postcard.

We are not an umbrella body. Our work is four discrete things, each with one trustee responsible for it, each accounted for separately, each kept within reach of the people it serves.

A printed programme leaflet held in a volunteer's hand, the four undertakings of George Ognell's Charity listed on the front in serif type.

Initiative 01 · Housing

Ognell’s Row

The almshouse itself. Four cottages, set in a row on the south side of Knockhundred Row, two minutes’ walk from the parish church and three from the Post Office. The buildings date from 1786 (the row was rebuilt after a fire that year); the underlying bequest is older, dating to George Ognell’s will of 1632.

Each almshouse contains a kitchen, a sitting room, one bedroom and a small bathroom, with a back door into the shared walled garden. Residents pay a weekly maintenance contribution of £42, set by the trustees and reviewed each spring. The contribution covers the buildings insurance, the council tax, and the cost of coal for the kitchen range; it does not cover food, electricity, or personal items.

Beneficiaries: older residents of West Sussex (age 60+) who have lived in the county for at least ten years and who, in the trustees’ judgement, could not otherwise afford to remain in Midhurst. We do not assess on income alone; we look at the whole of a person’s situation, and we take our time.

Geography: the almshouses are in Midhurst (postcode GU29 9DQ). Eligibility extends across the parishes of Midhurst, Easebourne, Cocking, Stedham, Trotton, Iping and Bepton.

Supported by the South Downs Almshouse Network (Stedham), which holds the buildings reserve fund on our behalf.

Ognell's Row in low winter sun: four green-painted cottage doors, flint-and-brick walls, a hand-painted plaque set into the third lintel reading George Ognell's Charity in serif gold lettering.
Ognell’s Row, Knockhundred Row, Midhurst, GU29.
A volunteer in a tweed coat lifting overwintered leeks from the brick-walled kitchen garden behind Ognell's Row, late winter sun.
The walled kitchen garden, photographed in February 2026.

Initiative 02 · Garden & grounds

The Walled Garden

Behind the almshouses, a brick-walled kitchen garden of about a fifth of an acre, originally established by a bequest from Miss Helena Hollist of Cocking in 1881. It has been continuously cultivated since.

The garden is run by a small team of regular volunteers from the surrounding parishes, who meet on Tuesday mornings between 09.00 and 12.00 from March to October, and on the first Tuesday of each month over the winter. The principal crops are soft fruit, brassicas, root vegetables, sweet peas and herbs. Produce goes first to the residents, then to the volunteers, and the surplus to Midhurst Foodbank.

Beneficiaries: the four almshouse residents, the small team of regular volunteers, and the wider Midhurst Foodbank network.

Geography: the garden is on the same site as the almshouses, GU29 9DQ. Volunteers travel in from across the parishes of Midhurst, Easebourne, Cocking and Stedham.

Supported by Midhurst Foodbank, who collect the surplus on Tuesday afternoons.

Initiative 03 · Welfare grants

The Wassail Fund

A small fund of welfare grants for older neighbours within our area of benefit. The name was suggested in 2018 by a resident who remembered the wassailing of the orchards at Cocking when she was a girl. The fund was newly established that year, when the residual endowment of George Ognell’s Educational Foundation was received, but its character is older — informal, discretionary, parochial.

Grants are typically between £75 and £350. We pay for a heating bill, a hearing aid, a new pair of spectacles, a winter coat, a stair-rail at the top of a steep staircase, a taxi to a hospital appointment. We pay the supplier directly where we can. We never pay cash, and we never ask for receipts of a personal kind.

Applications come to us by letter, by telephone (left on the answering machine and returned within 48 hours), or in person at the Tuesday garden mornings. Two trustees review each application; the typical decision time is six working days from receipt to payment.

Beneficiaries: older residents of Midhurst and the surrounding parishes who would not otherwise be able to meet a small, time-sensitive need. We do not require a household-income test; we ask only one question, which is whether the applicant could meet the need without our help.

Geography: the parishes of Midhurst, Easebourne, Cocking, Stedham, Trotton, Iping and Bepton.

Supported by Sussex Community Foundation, who match-fund our winter appeal to the Wassail Fund each November.

A trustee at a kitchen table, writing in a green hardback ledger marked The Wassail Fund in gold serif lettering, a teacup beside her.
The Wassail Fund ledger, kept since 2018.
Two older women in a sunlit sitting room, one pouring tea, a knitted blanket across one lap, a Sunday afternoon.
A Sunday Doors visit, with kind permission of the two photographed.

Initiative 04 · Companion visits

Sunday Doors

A weekly Sunday-afternoon visit from a trained volunteer companion to an older neighbour who would otherwise see no one between Friday and Monday. The scheme was started by trustee Mary Comper in 1997, after she noticed that the woman two doors down had not had a visitor in three weekends running. It has been continuous since.

Volunteers are paired carefully. We meet you at our office in person, run a DBS check, train you in safeguarding (a Saturday morning at the parish room in Easebourne), and pair you with one or two older neighbours. The visits are 90 minutes long, on Sunday afternoons between 14.00 and 16.30, and we ask that you keep coming for as long as it works for you both.

Last year (2025) volunteers made 412 visits across the four villages and Midhurst. The current rota carries 19 visitor-resident pairings; the waiting list of older neighbours who would like a visit but have not yet been paired stands, as of May 2026, at seven.

Beneficiaries: older residents of Midhurst, Cocking, Easebourne and Stedham who have asked for a Sunday visitor.

Geography: the four parishes named above. We do not currently extend to Trotton, Iping or Bepton, where the road distances make a weekly visit impractical for our volunteers; we make Wassail Fund grants there instead.

Supported by Age UK Horsham District, who provide our safeguarding training each spring.