The charity was founded in 1858 by Mr William Willats and recently celebrated its 150th Anniversary.
William Willats
William Willats was born into a middle class family in Middlesex in 1790. He qualified as an accountant and lived in the shadow of St Paul’s cathedral in Cheapside. Whilst in France met and married his wife Mary Ann Baker in 1835. The birth of his son, William Hale, was announced in the Times of London on 14th July 1836. Soon after, he returned to England, to Portland Place in Bath, with his household. He was now a wealthy man, and is recorded in contemporary rates as a ‘landed proprietor’.
The Willats’ Estate
We do not know from where William's wealth derived; inherited, from his wife or through business dealings. But he was undoubtedly a very rich man by todays standards. In 1850 he was able to buy and redevelop the historic Ruddle manor house in Gloucestershire, which he renamed Newnham House. After improving and extending this property, he moved his family to Wolverton Hall in Dorset, and then, in 1859, to their grandest and final family home at Denton Court in Kent. When he founded his charity in 1858, he was able to endow to it a substantial number of properties in Bath.
Mr Willats’ Charity
As a young man William is believed to have committed himself to establishing a charity to support missionaries and evangelists willing to work with the poor. His decision was made in the context of early nineteenth century concern about the condition of the poor in England. There was, for example, the 1832 Royal Commission into the Operation of the Poor Law.
William himself was more concerned with spiritual than physical needs of the poor. He sought to appoint 'Poor Man’s Guides to Eternal Life', people who would:
'...visit poorest, and lowest, classes of society, to read, and explain to them the Holy Scriptures, sermons, and other good books, to pray with, or read prayers to, them, and generally to impart to them, religious instruction, advice, and consolation'.
He appointed these ‘Guides’ himself until his death, and showing an unusually enlightened attitude for the period by appointing women as well as men as his charities Guides.
The Legacy
William Willats died in 1867, aged 77, just short of seeing his charity’s tenth year. He is buried in the church yard of St Mary Magdelane, in the family’s Denton Estate, and is commemorated there by two tablets and a stained glass window. His son, who studied at Eton, and then Christchurch College, Oxford, would later be appointed a JP and become High Sherriff of Kent.
A service was held in the chapel of St John’s Hospital in Bath, to celebrate the centenary of Mr Willat’s Charity in 1958, and another to mark 125 years was held at Christ Church, Bath in 1983. 150th anniversary of the foundation of the charity was celebrated on 13th November 2008 in St Michaels Church, Bath. When many guides and their pastors attended the service. Today the charity supports over 100 guides around the country.
For further details, view our history leaflet.
