Hanbury's Charity: Church Langton to Westminster

In one of my early outings with my digital camera I visited East Langton and Church Langton. That visit led to several postings, including one on William Hanbury and his charitable schemes.

I have since discovered that Hanbury's Charity was the subject of a House of Lords debate in 1895 in which both the Marquess of Salisbury and the Archbishop of Canterbury took part.

The problem was that Hanbury's ambitions far exceeded the endowment he left on his death. This is brought out by a Commons written answer from 1921, when the Charity again came up at Westminster:

The Reverend William Hanbury, by a series of deeds made in 1767, directed the establishment of a school, the endowment of an organist, the provision of beef for the poor, the establishment of a fund to provide organs, the establishment of a picture gallery, a library, a free printing press, a hospital, and various professorships with an income of £5,909 a year, the expenditure of £100,000 on the erection of a church at Church Langton and the erection of a Temple of Religion and Virtue.

The fund of about £2,000 which he provided to satisfy these purposes proved scarcely adequate, and it is difficult to say to which of them he gave the preference.

This problem was tackled in 1895, which led to the debate in the Lords. Some participants thought that the Charity's revised objectives did not give sufficient weight to his wishes for the church at Church Langton.