What would you say if every year your landlord gave back half your rent (which was only 1d a week anyway) and finally said you need not pay anything at all? That has happened to Mrs. Ellen Pettet, of Wellingborough Road, Rushden.

Aged 85 (and just out of hospital after a fall), she lives in a council house, but it is quite unlike any council house you’ll find on the new estates.

Built of hefty blocks of stone, it is as good as new after seventy years and looks as if it will stand there for 700.

But how does Mrs. Pettet come to live there for nothing? Well, the story goes back to the days when the Sartoris family lived at Rushden Hall and regarded helping the less fortunate as their duty.

One of their good works was to build a block of four almshouses in Wellingborough Road in 1883 in memory of Mr. Frederick Maitland Sartoris.

Two of the almshouses

These were for widows of retainers, and for many years provided happy homes for old ladies.

Then came big changes. The Sartoris family sold the Hall, bought by Rushden Urban Council in 1930, and the almshouses passed into the care of trustees.

After some years it was clear that repairs would become a problem, and so the houses were offered to the town as a gift.

Newcomers Pay

Rushden Urban Council agreed, took them over in 1950, spent £2,000 to modernise them, and so obtained four old people’s bungalows, each for only £500 of public money.

“Council and trustees reached a gentleman’s agreement that as far as possible the houses would continue to be used for the purpose for which they were intended,” says Mr. A. G. Crowdy, clerk of the council.

In the spirit of this, Mrs. Pettet and Mrs. W. Low, who were tenants of two of the houses before the council took over, live rent free.

“But as we leave, the newcomers pay rent,” Mrs. Low explains.

Each Pay 7s

So Mrs. Partridge and Miss Clarke, who have moved into the other two houses since 1950, each pay 7s a week.

Twenty years ago, when first she arrived, Mrs. Pettet paid a penny a week rent, which she dropped into a collecting box on the shelf.

“Once a year Miss Mason called to collect it, and always gave me 2s back out of the 4s 4d.” Mrs. Pettet recalls. The penny-a-week was a nominal rent instituted by the Sartoris family so that the old people in the almshouses should still feel independent – they were “paying.”

Mrs. Pettet, as she looks out from the leaded windows of her little home on to a vastly changed Wellingborough Road, well remembers the great days of the Sartoris family.

“I was one of the schoolchildren chosen to strew flowers at the wedding of one of the daughters. We scattered them before the bride and bridegroom when they came out of the church.”

Soup Kitchen

Later, when Mrs. Pettet’s sister lay very ill, Mrs Sartoris would call with special meals and delicacies for her – as she always did for invalids.

Another Sartoris memory cherished in Rushden is that after the disastrous fire at Cave’s factory in 1901 the family started a soup kitchen at the Hall for those thrown out of work, and killed a bullock to give them a square meal.