On 15th August 2026, some 20 Coventry Society members visited Bedworth, where an extensive tour had been organised by Lynda Burton who is Chair of the Bedworth Society and also Secretary of the Old Meeting United Reform Church.
The tour started with the opportunity to visit the Nicholas Chamberlaine’s Almshouses, in the corner of which is housed the Bedworth Heritage Centre. As the plaque in the accompanying photograph from the site of his first clerical appointment at All Saints’ Church in Leek Wotton explains, Chamberlaine himself was a priest who was based in Bedworth for more than half a century. During his tenure, on the basis of the considerable holdings of land he had accumulated in the area, Chamberlaine established and endowed a trust to fund two schools and a hospital, which we would know today as an almshouse. Further to this, in his will of 1715 he left a bequest of £1000 for the trustees to spend as they saw fit to benefit the poor of the parish.
As a result, the almshouses which occupy such a prominent place today were built in 1840 on a new site where a farm had stood, replacing those built during Chamberlaine’s incumbency.
The somewhat eclectic and certainly incongruous design of these new premises was the work of an architect of some renown called Thomas Larkin Walker, who had studied under Pugin. He was recruited for this task by George Eliot’s father – Robert Evans – who acted as agent for the trust’s estate.
The considerable expenditure on the new almshouses – which was projected to amount to £7,500 – was made possible by the income arising from the acquisition of further lands by the trustees of Chamberlaine’s charity, which had then leased these to individuals prepared to mine the abundant and highly lucrative seams of coal which lay near the surface.
This historical background and a great deal else besides was explained to the visiting group by John Burton, local historian and husband to our tour guide, who was waiting for us in the Governors’ Hall for which an additional £500 was budgeted. Thanks to the generosity of the current trustees, we were allowed to sample for ourselves the almost baronial splendour of the Governors’ Hall, which is adorned with the coats of arms of many of the individuals who served as trustees.
After an account of the tradition called Bun Day – which still occurs towards the end of May each year, involving the distribution of currant buns to local schoolchildren –Lynda was good enough to lead us to the Old Meeting Chuch to take lunch.
The Church here is aptly named, as it was constructed 300 years ago in 1726 and is now Bedworth’s oldest extant building. Lynda explained that as a result of the so-called Five Mile Act – dating from 1665 – clergymen who refused to accept the 1662 Book of Common Prayer were banned from preaching within five miles of centres of population, explaining why this building stands just over five miles distant from Coventry.
With its array of colourful windows and its nineteenth century balcony, the building’s interior is particularly attractive, as the photograph here shows.
In addition to the almshouses and the Old Meeting Church, Bedworth offers many other places of interest such as the weavers cottages still in evidence today around the town. With a nod to the future, perhaps pride of place goes to the Miners’ Welfare Park built on former colliery land, which as Lynda explained is home to the newly-opened £34 million Activity and Leisure Centre.
If anyone is interested in visiting the Almshouses, they will be open as part of the Heritage Open Day scheme on Saturday 19th September 2026 with multiple tours available throughout the day – please see the following link for full details: https://www.heritageopendays.org.uk/submission-event/bedworth-almshouses-open-day-2026.html
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