York Historic Environment Record

Sir John Hunt was a wealthy York brewer and land owner who lived at Grimston Court, Dunnington, and owned a large area of farmland on the Elvington side of the Hull Road (A1079). As well as Hunt’s Brewery, he also owned the Scarborough and Whitby Brewery Company.
He died in April 1933 and his will made provision for the founding of Almshouses should his son Reginald die without a son.
After Reginald died childless in 1941 and his sister Violet in 1950, the Trustees sold the Grimston Court estate and breweries, and purchased part of the Fulford Park Estate from Miss. Audrey Master, whose family had lived in Fulford Park House since the late 19th century.

Reginald Hunt’s will defined that the Almshouses shall provide accommodation for:-
a) Almspeople for 10 married couples and 14 widows or spinsters, to be members of the Church of England and who through lack of means, ill health, accident or infirmity are wholly or in part unable to maintain themselves by their own exertions and having no children under 18 years of age.
b) A trained nurse
c) A resident porter

Reginald Hunt also required that the portrait of Sir John Hunt by George Fall and a portrait of himself by Richard Jack RA, shall always hang in the main hall of the Almshouses.
Sale of the breweries was also intended to provide funds for building the Almshouses and endowment of a charity, giving the widows and spinsters 7 shillings and 6 pence per week, and 12 shillings per week to the married couples.

A history of the establishment of the Almshouses is written on a parchment displayed on the wall of the main hall.

The Fulford Conservation Area statement describes the homes as “An attractive group of red brick and tile almshouses by Needham, Thorpe & White. Two storied with shaped gables, in terraces around three sides of an open square with smaller blocks behind. Set in a beautiful garden in a rural part of Fulford which provides an important transitional buffer between the village the urban Fishergate.”
Charles William Cashmore Needham (1893-1962) was a local architect, son of Samuel Needham who had settled in York in the late nineteenth century and served as architect to the Tadcaster Brewery Company (one example being his Fox Inn in Dringhouses) before setting up independently in 1904. Charles trained with his father but became Housing Architect for Leicester Corporation before returning to York in 1927 to carry on the family practice, later known successively as Needham & Thorp and Needham, Thorp & White. Charles Needham was keenly involved in local-authority housing and in town planning, qualifying for the (Royal) Town Planning Institute in 1925 and acting as consultant to Councils as varied as Hartlepool, Redcar, Richmond and Northallerton. His own tastes are represented by the firm’s Sir John Hunt Memorial cottage homes in Fulford (1954): neat, carefully-designed almshouses enlivened by shaped gables.

2015, Sir John Hunt Memorial Homes (Unpublished document). SYO1662.