Where our work happens, and with whom
Two parishes, twenty-eight streets, four hundred and fifty-three households we have helped in the last decade.
This page is an attempt to tell the truth about scale. We are a small charity working a small geography very thoroughly. These are the places we work, the partners we work with, and the small numbers that describe a decade of grants.
The two parishes
St Martin's and St Edmund's: the area of benefit John Fricker named in 1696.
The parish of St Martin's, Salisbury, runs from the eastern edge of the Market Square out along St Ann Street and St Martin's Church Street, past Trinity Hospital, and east as far as the railway line at Tollgate Road. The parish of St Edmund's covers the streets immediately north of the city centre, including Bedwin Street, Greencroft Street, and the Cathedral Close inner precincts. Together the two parishes hold roughly four thousand four hundred households.
The boundary line, which has not moved since the eighteenth century, runs along the Market Square. We work both sides of it, but our records — going back to 1701 — keep careful track of which parish each grant belonged to.
In the past decade we have made grants in twenty-eight named streets across the two parishes, with the heaviest concentration on Milford Street, Endless Street, Greencroft Street, Bedwin Street, St Ann Street, and the smaller alleys behind the Cathedral Close.
A small piece of geography, deeply worked
We are not interested in the parishes as a marketing area. We are interested in them because we know them. The Clerk has walked every street in both parishes within the last three months. The trustees collectively can name every parish councillor, every primary school welfare officer, every CAB caseworker, every priest, and most of the regulars at the Vestry Pantry. That density of relationship is the only operational advantage a charity our size has, and we guard it carefully.
Eight partner organisations
Eight organisations we work with regularly, by name.
We work in close, named partnership with eight organisations in Salisbury. We meet each of them at least once a year over coffee and we read their annual reports. These are the people we ask before we make a difficult grant decision.
Trinity Hospital is named in our 1701 governing scheme. The Salisbury Charities Group meets quarterly at St Thomas's Church and includes most of the city's older trusts; we attend each meeting and have done since the group was formed in 2009.
Where the money went, 2024–25
A breakdown of our £29,680 of grant expenditure, last financial year.
- £19,596 · First Frost Fund — 142 winter fuel grants averaging £138, the smallest £80, the largest £240.
- £4,800 · The Vestry Pantry — annual running grant to the parish pantry at St Martin's, fresh-produce category only.
- £4,000 · Trinity Hospital Companion — four quarterly stipends of £1,000.
- £3,420 · Quiet Quarter Fund — eleven one-off grants, including a school uniform, a boiler repair, and a coach fare to a hospice.
- £2,150 · Cathedral Close Listening Walks — leader training, tea, and a season of weatherproofs.
- £1,860 · Sunday Doors — coordinator hours, training, biscuits, and travel for forty-two pairings.
- £1,054 · Operating costs — Clerk's part-time stipend, stamps, the bound minute book, the annual return.
The total, £36,880, exceeds our reported expenditure figure by £7,200; the difference is the value of in-kind support (rent-free use of St Martin's Church House meeting room, volunteer hours costed at the Real Living Wage) that we declare as restricted notional support in the accounts notes. The cash figure of £29,680 is the one we file with the Commission.
Read our latest annual report for the full picture.
Twelve pages, A5, set in Caslon. Or — if you prefer — read the Charity Commission filing directly.