The Company has also contributed very large sums to the City and Guilds’ Institute during the last twenty-five years, for the support of its Central Technical College at South Kensington, its Technical College at Finsbury, its Art School at Kennington, and its Technological Examinations. It also took an active part in the foundation at Clerkenwell, on a site adjoining the Company’s Clarke’s Close Estate, of the Northampton Polytechnic Institute, to which it contributes annually. It has also given material assistance to the Leather Industries’ Department of the Yorkshire College, Leeds, now the Leeds University. Members of the Company take an active part in the government of these various institutions.
In 1887, the Company took steps to obtain the consolidation of their almshouses and of their minor pension charities, and in 1891 a Scheme, framed by the Charity Commissioners at the suggestion of the Company, came into operation, by which such charities were consolidated, and in place of the Judd almshouses in Great St. Helen’s, and the Newbury almshouses at Mile End, new and more convenient almshouses were erected at Palmer’s Green. In connection with this Scheme, the various charitable charges upon the Company’s properties were redeemed, and the Company’s estates are now free from any such charges.
In furtherance of the policy of Parliament to make the occupiers of land in Ireland the owners of their holdings, the Company resolved in 1886 to give their Irish tenants an opportunity of purchasing their holdings under the Land Acts; and the Pellipar Estate, in the County of Londonderry, has now passed entirely into the hands of the tenants.
The Company’s Hall premises have been greatly improved. Special mention may be made of the decoration of the dining-hall, which is now frequently placed at the disposal of other Companies, and literary and scientific institutions, on special occasions, and thus made more frequently useful, and of the renovation of the beautiful Oak Parlour, which had been allowed to fall into disuse.
In these various directions the present Court of the Company claim to have shown themselves not unworthy of the heritage handed down to them by their predecessors.
Quorum pars parva fui.
