This postcard by Francis Frith shows the Acre Almshouses as they looked around 1900.

The lych-gate style porch is now long gone but may not have been original to the 1869 building.

Likewise, the woodwork to the eaves of the gable ends. Both decorative features are probably late-Victorian and may be the product of Frank Beale’s joinery workshop, only a stone’s throw away; looking closely the porch does not seem to front any doorway.

Despite new plastic windows and doors being added in 1985, the overall frontage has not much altered except for the pairs of upper windows to the gable ends which are now one and the removal of the side chimneys.

The houses now await restoration after narrowly being saved from demolition three years ago, the delay owing to the difficulty in striking an agreeable balance between the two extremes of removing all out-of-keeping features and merely making them habitable.

There have been almshouses on this site for 400 years.

The chamberlain’s accounts for 1647 refer to repairs, which suggests some structures had already been standing there for a little time at least.

Nationally during the 16th century, after the disappearance of the monasteries that had earlier given Christian help in time of need, it became the practice for local men of means and goodwill to leave legacies to help provide for the poor of their town, usually an amount of money to be invested in land.

Interest from invested capital was then paid to the poor in goods such as bread, blankets, coats and suchlike.

As part of that charitable endeavour, endowments financed almshouses that housed aged and destitute locals who had fallen on hard times.

By 1601, more general aid to the poor was by means of the parish poor rate, a statutory requirement to be levied on those who could afford it, set and administered by local overseers.

After 1834, the nation’s poor generally became the responsibility of the local workhouse but bodies of charity trustees, often continuing an arrangement that was already happening (as in Andover), were set up to administer local monies and interest still accruing from past legacies.

The almshouses on the Acre were part of this, as was the grammar school.

There were also almshouses near the junction of the Salisbury and Weyhill roads, demolished in 1902 and the Pollen row of six in Marlborough Street, first endowed in 1686 and sold in 1975.

The Law stipulates that almshouses cannot be sold off without replacing them with an equal or greater number, and the Pollen houses were replaced by the new buildings in Borsberry Close.

The name is a tribute to Borsberry Shaw-Porter, a former mayor of Andover, who presented the charity trustees with the purchase price of the new site.

Today, the Andover Charity Trustees still fulfil their original role, and run the almshouses in Borsberry Close - eight were built in 1977 and six more in 1989.

They also award alms to deserving households who have suffered misfortune and need financial relief.

This work is rarely publicised and we have all become accustomed to the welfare state taking care of such things.

But there is always more to do and perhaps, as a final thought, some local residents might feel inspired - as in times past – to consider a bequest in their will, knowing that it would benefit directly the people of their own home town.