A new opportunity to serve as a trustee of the Town Estates Charity in Sibford Gower
The Town Estate Charity is a specifically Gower & Burdrop institution but much of the support it provides particularly through its support for the school and the Village Hall, extends across the valley to embrace the wider community as a whole.
In a nutshell
Amongst all the many organisations, institutions, clubs and societies that contribute so richly to our community the Town Estates Charity is unique – and the oldest. It has a 400-year old history that began and continues to this day as an endowment for the village primary school.
Another of its charitable arms is the personal support it provides for those in the area who are in need, might be experiencing particular hardship, or are in some personal distress; a quiet dedication that hasn’t changed much over all those years. A posting in support of that work appears elsewhere on this website.
What has changed is the increasing range of general benefits and grant funding it has provided or underwritten over the years – all supported from the income it derives from its management of the estates and property it owns.
It contributed £2,000 towards sound system improvements and a hearing loop at the Village Hall during its refurbishment, for example, and continues to contribute to the ongoing work of the Sibford Support Group. In recent years it has purchased significant plots of land in the village that have assured the future independence of the primary school, and in the case of Wheathills and the Millennium Field have together secured a landscape break in the Sib Valley between the villages.
Nomination
The Gower Parish Council would like formally now to invite interest from anyone living in the locality in taking the place of the Charity’s Treasurer, Mike Lewis, presently one of the Council’s five nominations – who is stepping down at the close of the year.
There are formal eligibility declarations to be signed, but in the first instance applicants should simply let the Council know in their own words their relationship with the village, and the skills, knowledge and experience they feel they would bring to the role.
On this occasion, in addition to the wider work of the charity, the Council would particularly welcome a personal interest in the school.
Applications should be sent to the Council’s clerk:
Kirsty Buttle < sibford.gower.pc
preferably by Wednesday 16th September 2020