The Apprentice Bequest is the smallest of our three constituent funds. It is also, by some distance, the one most parishioners ask us about. We thought, with the spring application window approaching, that a plain piece on how it works might be useful. What follows is the trustees' working understanding, in the language we use with one another at the kitchen table. The formal rules are in the scheme; this is a sketch of how the scheme breathes.
The bequest comes from a will read at St Mary's parish church in 1832. The exact words of the will direct the trustees of the day to apply the income of a small endowment 'for the apprenticing of poor lads of the parish to honest trades within five miles of the church porch.' Three things are striking about that sentence in the modern context: the word 'lads', the geography of 'five miles', and the assumption — perfectly normal in 1832 — that a young person entering trade would do so by way of a formal apprenticeship indenture rather than, say, a college day-release or a level-3 NVQ. Each of those three points has been gently re-read by the trustees of every generation since.
The Charity Commission agreed, in the 1970s, that the bequest could be applied to young people of any sex within the parish. We hold to that. The phrase 'within five miles of the church porch' is read generously to mean the nearby market towns where placements actually exist — Bromyard, Ledbury, sometimes Hereford. The phrase 'honest trades' we read as: any trade or craft for which a person could plausibly take a trade test. We do not require an old-style indenture; a written confirmation from the employer that the applicant is in (or starting) a recognised apprenticeship is enough.
What the bequest can pay for, in 2026, looks like this. We pay for tools — a set of chisels, a Stanley plane, a hawk and trowel, pruning gloves, a pair of decent work boots, a hi-vis vest. We pay for safety equipment — goggles, hearing defenders, a respirator if the trade needs one. We pay for the cost of a day-release at a college — for example, a half-day fee at a horticultural college for a young cidermaker. We pay for an initial set of work clothes, if the placement does not provide them. We pay for the printing cost of a paper portfolio, if that is what the trade asks for at the end of the first year.
What the bequest does not pay for: it does not pay tuition fees for a degree (a degree is not a trade apprenticeship). It does not pay rent or living costs (the bequest is for the apprenticing, not for the maintenance of the apprentice — that distinction is in the original wording and we hold to it). It does not pay travel costs, except in very modest amounts; we will not subsidise a car. It does not pay a phone bill, a laptop, or general study materials.
The award is typically between £150 and £250, decided at the trustees' spring meeting in March. Some years we make two awards; some years one; in 2019, when no application met the bequest's terms, we made none and rolled the year's allowance forward. We do not keep a reserve beyond a year's allowance plus a small contingency; the original donor's intent, as we read it, was that the bequest should be turned over each year, not banked.
Why do we still ask applicants to write to us by hand, on a single side of paper, rather than complete a form online? Two small reasons and one larger one. The two small reasons are: we do not have the resources to administer an online application system, and we do not want to keep applicants' personal data in any database we cannot easily delete with a kitchen drawer. The larger reason is that the act of writing to a parish charity in your own words is a small but real test of fit: an apprentice who can write a single coherent paragraph about what they are training in, where, and what the grant would help with, is an apprentice who can also write a coherent paragraph to a customer, an inspector, or a college tutor. We are not testing literacy in any narrow sense — we will read a hand-printed letter with grammatical errors with as much care as a typed letter without them — but we are testing the small habit of putting a request into words.
The 2025 award went to a young joiner in Halmond's Frome — Sam, 21 — towards a Stanley No. 4 plane, two chisels, and a set of safety goggles. The 2024 award went to a young cider-maker, Thomas — 19 — towards a set of pruning gloves, a pair of waterproof trousers, and the half-day college fee for an introductory orchard module. The 2023 award went to a young hairdresser at a salon in Bromyard, towards a set of professional scissors and a kit bag. We mention these to give a sense of the range; we are not advertising the applicants.
If you, or someone you know, is starting an apprenticeship in 2026 and lives within the parish boundary, the spring application window is open until the end of February. A single side of paper, signed by the applicant, posted to the address below, is what we ask. We will reply by post within a fortnight of the trustees' March meeting, whether or not the application is successful. We do not give written reasons for an unsuccessful application — we owe applicants honesty in advance, not justification afterwards — but if you would like to write back and ask, we will reply.
— The trustees, Bishop's Frome, 12 February 2026.