THE CODDENHAM GARDEMAU CHARITIES

Update on Recent Activity

The original Gardemau Charities were founded in the mid-18th century by the Rev Baltazar Gardemau, Vicar of Coddenham and his wife, Lady Catherine Bacon, of Shrubland Hall. For more information on the history of the charities, please see the community website:

coddenham-parish.uk and click on ‘Links’

Some of the original charities have been wound up over the years, and there are now three: The Gardemau Church Charity (GCC) No: 230602,The Lady Catherine Gardemau Educational Foundation (LCGEF) No: 310368 and The Lady Catherine Gardemau Charity for the Poor (the Poor Charity) No: 231940

All three have the same trustees – four are appointed, plus the Vicar of Coddenham ex officio (currently vacant as the benefice is in an interregnum), and a non-voting Clerk – but are distinct corporate bodies. The trustees and Clerk are all local, and all are volunteers.

All three charities have ‘schemes’ (ie binding terms of reference) agreed with the Charity Commission (CC):

GCC: ‘The furtherance of the work of the Church of England in the Parish of Coddenham’. With CC agreement, we construe this flexibly as helping those in any kind of need and/or benefitting the local community. A secondary objective is caring for the Grade I listed St Mary’s Church in Coddenham.

LCGEF: anything broadly educational. Again, with CC agreement, we interpret this fairly widely.

The Poor Charity: The charity’s name is slightly problematic, as the word ‘poor’ is often seen as a stigma, with people reluctant to identify, or be identified, as ‘poor’. So, we avoid this by making a £500 monthly donation to the award-winning Ipswich charity Families in Need (FIND) for them to allocate as they see fit.

Examples of the charities’ activities in the last five years or so include:

The Gardemau Church Charity:

• Grant to single mother in difficult circumstances towards child care costs
• Paid off rent arrears for struggling family
• Sent gifts of flowers to elderly and vulnerable during Covid and supported provision of food parcels
• Funded open air harvest and carol services for the whole benefice when Covid prohibited indoor services
• Funds eco/green cleaning products and Fairtrade tea and coffee for St Mary’s church
• Part-funded defibrillator for centre of village
• Paid for repair of St Mary’s church clock
• Funds maintenance of the Lower Churchyard (Coddenham has two. That around the church is closed and maintenance is responsibility of the Parish Council, but GCC has also paid for work there, eg restoration of a collapsing tomb).
• Recently donated £20k (towards £60k total) to St Mary’s Restoration Appeal.
• Supported SWT audit of Coddenham’s green spaces and development of Management Plan
• Supported 2022 Coddenham Parish Survey as basis for new Local Plan
• Part-funds village community website
• When meadow next to Gosbeck church, vital for car parking, came up for sale, bought it and lease it to Gosbeck Parochial Church Council for a peppercorn rent
• Funded display and notice boards for Coddenham and other churches in benefice (eg Hemingstone and Gosbeck)
• Made donations towards installation of toilets at Crowfield and Stonham Aspal churches and towards repair of vestry roof at Creeting St Mary Church.

Apart from the meadow at Gosbeck, the only property the GCC still owns is the old village lock up, and a plot of land behind it, at junction of School Rd and Blacksmith’s Lane, Coddenham, part of the current Planning Application.

For most of the last 25 years, this was leased to the neighbouring property for car parking, generating income for the GCC. This arrangement ceased two years ago and no one else has wished to lease the land. It has, therefore, become a liability to the GCC, as maintaining it entails costs, rather than an asset. The trustees have a duty to make best use of the charity’s assets, so took professional advice. This was to apply for Outline Planning Permission for a small house on the plot, then offer it at public auction to release funds for investment. This would satisfy the CC’s requirement for the trustees to obtain best value when disposing of an asset. The lack of affordable small houses in Coddenham was a key issue identified in the 2022 Parish Survey. The Gardemau works closely with another Coddenham charity, the Day Foundation (DF). The DF has already built, and runs, award-winning supported accommodation for the elderly in the village, and also provides two cottages at below market rents to young families. It is interested in purchasing the site, and building a small house for rental to local young families. The application is also in accordance with the new Government’s desire to accelerate appropriate house building.

We applied to MSDC two years ago in October 2022. The application has support from the other members of the Coddenham Community Response Group, comprising the Parish Council, the Community Shop, the Coddenham Centre, the Parochial Church Council, and the Day Foundation, as well as Coddenham’s two District Councillors, Cllrs Penny and Whitehead. There have been no objections from any immediate neighbours. Negotiations with MSDC continue.

The second charity, the Lady Catherine Gardemau Educational Foundation, has been increasingly busy in recent years:

• Made numerous grants to Stonham Aspal Primary School (as the one attended by most Coddenham children) for equipment and materials, licences (eg music) and subscriptions, and also for additional support for a SEND pupil
• Similarly, a made a number of grants to Debenham High School, eg for their new staging and, currently, towards refurbishing an area as an environmental/retreat garden
• Grants to 6th form students for course equipment (eg camera)
• To student from single parent family towards University costs
• To children from low-income families for school trips in UK and abroad
• To local Ukrainian refugee family for school transport and other costs
• And, increasingly, to struggling families towards school transport costs
• We pay the rent of Coddenham’s hugely successful St Mary’s Babies and Toddlers group, and also fund some of its equipment (eg new low tables for little ones), enabling the group to keep its charges very low, vital to many low-income parents
• On a broader ‘educational’ front, we pay for free Historic Buildings and Nature Trail leaflets for the village, and have part funded signs for the new nature trail
• We have paid for three accredited Red Cross First Aid at Work courses, enabling people from Coddenham and surrounding villages to attend free of charge and become qualified First Aiders, and also a defibrillator course.

The grants the Gardemau charities make are mostly relatively modest – a few hundred or thousand pounds, but they make a significant difference. Things happen and get done which would be impossible or, at least, much more difficult if we were unable to help. Working with the DF maximises the effectiveness of what we do. To best of our knowledge, in the last 25 years we have never refused an application which meets the spirit of our terms of reference.

Nearly 300 years on, we hope the Rev Baltazar and Lady Catherine would be pleased that their generosity is still bearing fruit and benefitting local people as they intended.

 

David McDonnell (Chairman)

Tim Thomas (Treasurer)

 

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