In 1687 the Commissioners for Charitable Uses reported on their investigation into the ‘Town Rents’ charity. They were working under the Act to redress the Misimployment of Lands, Goods, and Stocks of Money, heretofore given to Charitable Uses.
They discovered that:
The rents from property and land in Mountsorell, Quorndon, Barrow sur Soarum, and Roathlye were long since given by some person or persons unknown to several inhabitants of the Mountsorell, to be by them employed towards charitable uses. A schedule of the property and land is given below.
Part of the ‘rents’ were paid to the curate and part to the chapel clerk with the rest being used for repairing the highways, and other necessary uses.
John Smith and Adrian Gregory were the surviving trustees for the collecting and paying the rents.
Ralph Thurman, had not paid his town-rent of eleven shillings and eight pence per annum, for eleven years and half ending the four and twentieth day of June last, amounting in the whole to six pounds, fourteen shillings, and two pence.
All the trees of oak, ash, or elm, growing, in the parcels of land mentioned in the schedule ought to be applied to some charitable uses within the town of Mountsorell, except the trees in the chapel yard, and one close of John Jarratt called Bagnall’s Close.
The Schedule
| Description of property | Owner | Occupied by | Rent pa |
| Chapel Yard Close and another close | Mr Smalley | Mr Smalley | 8s 8d |
| A messuage called the Swan Inn Field near the wood called Hawcliffe Wood | John Oldershaw | John Oldershaw Edward Thornton | 5s 4d |
| A messuage called the White Lion | Richard Ireland | Samuel Hood | 11s 2d |
| A messuage | Ralph Thurman | Ralph Thurman | 11s 8d |
| A piece of land in Quorndon called Daw Piece | Mr Thistlethwaite | Mr Thistlethwaite | 1s 8d |
There was another commission into charities in England and Wales which lasted from 1812 to 1839. The report on the charities of Mountsorrel, published in 1838, referred to the Town Rents charity as the Unknown Donor’s Charity. It states that in November 1650, whereby Ralph Smalley conveyed all and singular the messuages, cottages, houses, edifices, and lands in Mount Sorrell, Rothley, Barrow, and Quorndon, which he had of the gift and feoffment of George Jarrett and others, to the use of himself and several other persons, their heirs and assigns.
It also states that the curate to be paid £5pa, 20s yearly to be paid to the schoolmaster to teach the children of the poor, 13s 4d. to be paid yearly to the chapel clerk and the residue should be yearly paid to the poor of both ends of the town of Mountsorrell. The curate and schoolmaster to collect the rents and give them to the overseers to distribute among the poor. The curate and schoolmaster also to keep an account of the receipts and payments. And it was further decreed that the surviving trustees should appoint new trustees, and that when there were only three of the trustees living, that they should appoint 10 other persons living in Mountsorrel.
When the school was ‘taken over’ in 1746 by Sir Joseph Danvers to set up his free school he required that the trustees of the Town Rents should continue to pay twenty shillings a year to the Chappel Yard schoolmaster as they had to the previous headmaster, James Freeman; otherwise only 4 boys from Mountsorrel, not 8, would receive free education.
The 1838 commission reported that new trustees were appointed, the last two in 1727, but the charity was not recorded in the Parliamentary Returns of 1786.
They also stated that the income of this charity probably arose from fee-farm rents, but the lands described in the schedule cannot be identified, due to the changes made in the description of all the property in the parish by the inclosure of 1781. This charity must therefore be considered to be lost.
Note fee-farm properties are freehold properties although the owner is subject to annual rents, effectively leases forever.
