Short notes, written or said over a kettle, from neighbours the bequests have touched.

I have lived in the same stone cottage on the lane behind the church for fifty-one years. My husband died seventeen years ago and my boys live up in Manchester now. The cottage is small enough that the first night with the range lit is the only proper notice winter ever gives. Last November the trustees' fuel voucher arrived on a Thursday morning, with the wind already turning; the coal man came on the Tuesday. I have known both trustees since they were small, although I would not say so to either of them. The voucher buys a half-load — enough for the cold spell from late November through to the new year, when the south side of the cottage starts to warm up again. I do not pretend I could not heat the kitchen without it, but I am much warmer because of it.

I started my apprenticeship at a small cidery up the lane from the village hall in March. The Apprentice Bequest paid for my work boots, two pairs of waterproof trousers, and the half-day my college charges for the orchard module. The grant was £200; my boots cost more than that. But the bequest paid for the proof I could turn up to work for a year. That was the point of it. The trustees' letter said they were giving the grant in memory of a man who left the money in 1832 and that I should not feel I had to thank him, although I would say I have thought about him more than I expected to. We are the eighth Tom in the parish records since 1900; the bequest has helped four of us.

I started cleaning the church when my eldest was at primary school. I have polished this font for thirty winters and I expect it will outlast me by another seven hundred years. The new oak cover that the Church Fabric Fund paid for last spring is the best piece of work the church has had on the font in my lifetime. The joiner came over from Bromyard with a single piece of oak; I had a tea with him while he sat it for the first time. The trustees were there for the placing, which mattered to me — they have to see what the fund pays for, not just sign cheques for it. I do not have much to say about money. I have a lot to say about a piece of oak in a church.

We are not church-goers and the consolidated charities had not registered with me until the Hop Sunday walk a few autumns ago. We brought our two — at the time, six and four — and they have asked, since, why the river bends the way it does at the meadow corner. I did not know either; a trustee did, and explained it without making it feel like a lecture. The kissing-gate on the Poor's Land has my four-year-old's height notched into the gatepost, by a friendly neighbour with a knife. That is also charity work, even if it is not strictly the bequest's.

I have been the parish council clerk for the better part of fifteen years. I have worked with bigger charities and smaller charities, with national ones and parish-only ones. The thing I notice most about the consolidated charities is that there are only two of them on the trust, and they answer letters in their own hand. That is rarer than people think — and from my chair, as the clerk who has to refer the names of older parishioners for fuel-grant consideration each autumn, it is also a useful thing. I know who is reading. I know who will reply. There is no inbox; there is a kitchen table.