Sir Stephen Soame was not a man to hide his wealth. He restored and reglazed the great north window in St Paul's Cathedral, renovated the roof of the Grocers' Hall in London and left money in perpetuity for the poor. He commissioned the building of a magnificent mansion at Little Thurlow with extensive formal gardens, ponds and a splendid library. Sadly, the original house burned down in 1809, but sketches and etchings of it still exist. Later family members commissioned a beautifully painted map of his lands in the area which clearly shows many of the houses that exist to this day, and a few that have long since disappeared. The map also shows the extensive grounds and the comparative size of the mansion itself.
In addition, he ordered almshouses to be built for 'eight single poor persons of 64 years of honest life and conversation', overseen by an usher. Such beneficence came with strings attached, and the occupants were required to attend church services twice on Sunday and every Holy Day and working day when divine service was read, and if they did not their pension of 14 old pence per week was to be forfeited and dispensed between the rest of the inhabitants! The almsfolk should be given eight faggots per year and every two years they should have a gown of 'some northern black cloth or some other decent or seemly colour which shall cost 5s a yard'. He also decreed that a school be built for the male children of Thurlow and the surrounding villages, and similar strong conditions were imposed: 'such scholars as shall once be put to this school shall not upon any high occasion or idle business as gleaning and such like, take them from school, and after, send them thither again.'
Alms Houses, Thurlow