Ecclesiastical · since 1964
The Parish of St Mary the Virgin
Our ex officio trustee link, the source of our oldest constituent fund, and the venue for the Wassail Fund packing weekend each December.
Community impact
Six wards. One ancient parish. Sixty-two years of small grants.
This is what we have, in plain numbers. The trust has not, ever, paid for a glossy impact report or a national survey. The figures below come from the trustees' minute book, the Charity Commission filings, and the half-page reports our larder partners write each quarter.
0
Hardship grants since 2020
£0
Granted to neighbours · 2020–25
0
Befriending partnerships
0
Larder households a month
Where the grants land
Across the six historic wards of the parish, in the proportions a parish actually has.
This is the share of Winter Doorstep grants paid out across the parish wards in the 2024–25 round. The trustees aim to keep the share roughly proportional to each ward's population — but in practice we follow the referrals where they fall.
Daybrook26%
Killisick22%
Woodthorpe18%
Redhill14%
Front Street & St Mary's12%
Bestwood Village8%
Named partners
The other small bodies we work alongside.
None of these organisations is run by us. We pay in, send a trustee to the AGM, and read the half-page report. The relationships have, in most cases, outlived the individual trustees who set them up.
Ecclesiastical · since 1985
St Paul's, Daybrook
Hosts the parish food larder. Receives a quarterly £600 grant from the Parish Pantry programme and our annual Christmas Eve donation.
Local authority · since 1992
Gedling Borough Council welfare team
The route by which most Winter Doorstep referrals reach the trustees, and the named referral point for households in arrears.
Education · since 1996
Arnold Hill Academy welfare team
Identifies First Bell families each July. Receives the consolidated August grant and pays through the school's bursary route.
Education · since 2001
Redhill Academy welfare team
The trust's secondary referral point for First Bell and for school-aged Winter Doorstep cases on the parish edge.
Voluntary · since 2018
Arnot Hill Community Larder
The community fridge run from the back of Arnot Hill House. Receives £200 a month and is staffed by a small rota of parish volunteers.
Voluntary · since 2024
Bestwood Village Allotment Society
A one-off £1,200 grant in 2026 to take on a second plot for the parish larder's fresh-produce supply.
Health · informal
Daybrook Surgery district nurses
An informal referral channel — the district nurses know our chair by sight and ring through the urgent cases on a Friday afternoon.
Civic · informal
Arnold Library
Holds a small standing display of our parish information leaflets and the Charity Commission summary for any walk-in enquiry.
A short essay
On the difference between a parish and a postcode.
The ancient parish of Arnold and the modern town of Arnold are not, quite, the same thing. The town has expanded outwards since the war — postcodes for places like Mapperley and Carlton can edge onto the same Royal Mail walking route — but the parish, in our governing document, is the old ecclesiastical boundary that runs from the curve of the Daybrook in the south to the woodland edge of Bestwood in the north.
It matters because we are bound to it. A household three streets the wrong side of the parish boundary will not be helped by us, however deserving the case. We will instead point them to the relief charity of the next parish over — and there usually is one, because the English parish system is, even now, a remarkably dense net of small local trusts of which we are one threadbare knot.
The constraint is, in our reading, also the strength of it. A trust without a boundary becomes a postcode lottery for its applicants and an administrative impossibility for its trustees. A trust bound to a parish, with a parish boundary stone you can drive past in twenty minutes, is a body that has to learn the streets it serves. It learns them in detail. It learns them by walking them, on a Sunday afternoon, between the two doors of a befriending round.