Bendlowes Trust

In need of a wheelchair or other similar items on a temporary basis, then contact Angela Tanner 01371 850445

You may have been to a Parish Councils AGM in May at sometime, and wondered what it is all about when a report is given about the work the trust has undertaken during the last financial year.

The Bendlowes trust is linked directly to a William Bendlowes who was a serjent-at-Law of Gt Bardfield and owned a large number of properties. The original aims of his will were to help the poor of the parish in the form of boot money, later coal, given to two elderly men and two elderly women each year.

The old cottages on Pound Hill were sold circa 1950 and the charity 'reformed' at that time and the gifts continued.

Great help to the Trust was the sale of the maps and tea towels some ten years ago, this really put the trust back on the map and with a balance of £2,500 it was able to carry on.

The trustees of which there are three, being appointed by the Parish Council with the vicars position being permanent, the remaining trustees serve for four years, the trust also has wheelchairs commode, walking aids and adjustable table that can be borrowed.

History-SERJEANT-AT-LAW, the name (see above) given to what was formerly an order of the highest rank of barristers at the English or Irish bar. The word is a corruption of serviens ad legem, as distinguished from apprenticius ad legem, or utter barrister, who probably originally obtained his knowledge of law by serving a kind of apprenticeship to a serjeant.When the order of serjeants was instituted is unknown, but it certainly dates from a very remote period. The authority of serjeant counters or countors (i.e. pleaders, those who frame counts in pleading) is treated in the Mirror of Justices, and they are named in 3 Edw. I. c. 29. They may possibly have been the representatives of the conteurs mentioned in the great customary of Normandy. The position of the serjeant had become assured when Chaucer wrote. One of the characters in the Canterbury Tales is A serjeant of the law, wary and wise, That often had y-been at the parvis. i Serjeants (except kings serjeants) were created by writ of summons under the great seal, and wore a special and distinctive dress, the chief feature of which was the coif, a white lawn or silk skull-cap, afterwards represented by a round piece of black silk at the top of the wig.The monopoly was finally abolished in 1845 by Act of Parliament. For at least 600 years the judges of the superior courts of common law were always serjeants, but by the Judicature Act 1873 no person appointed a judge of the High court of Justice or the Court of Appeal was required to take or have taken the degree of serjeant-at-law.