Bardney · Southrey · Tupholme · Bucknall
Quiet first.
A grant that has to be announced is rarely the one most needed. We post cheques in plain envelopes and we keep family names off our annual report.
Established 1864 · Registered Charity 219957
We have sat at kitchen tables in the Witham valley for a hundred and sixty years, and the work is still mostly listening.
The Kitchings General Charity is a small endowment serving the parishes of Bardney, Southrey, Tupholme, and Bucknall. We make quiet grants to households in hardship, hold the pension fund for the Southrey widows, and put a little money behind the village schools.
What we believe
No. 01
No. 02
No. 03
No. 04
Four habits we have kept for a hundred and sixty years.
These are not strategic pillars. They are the small disciplines that the original trustees wrote down by hand in 1864, and which the present-day trustees still try to live by.
Local always.
Our area of benefit is the four parishes — Bardney, Southrey, Tupholme, Bucknall. We have turned down well-meaning bequests that would have taken us beyond the parish boundary.
Small & warm.
A small gift handed over at a kitchen table is worth more than a large one delivered by formal letter. Most of our grants in 2024 were under £200.
Trust the parish.
Our trustees are nine local people. They know who needs a fortnight of help with the heating, and they know who would rather not be asked twice.
Campaign · Winter 2026
The Quiet Door Fund — our small emergency reserve for the four parishes.
Each year we set aside a modest reserve for the kind of small bills that arrive without warning: a boiler that has packed up in February, a school-uniform shortfall in September, the funeral costs that come a fortnight after a quiet bereavement. Our 2026 target is £6,400 — enough for forty households of meaningful help. Every gift, however small, is welcomed.
Our four named funds
Each fund does one small thing, and tries to do it kindly.
We are a grant-making trust, not a service provider. Our funds are modest, named, and bounded by the four parishes. The trustees meet four times a year to consider applications.
Fund No. 01
The Southrey Widows' Pension
A small quarterly pension paid to eligible widows of the parish of Southrey. The original Kitching bequest specified this fund first, and we have honoured it without interruption since 1864. In 2024 we paid pensions to nine widows.
Read more
Fund No. 02
The Parish Hardship Fund
Small cash or in-kind grants for households in difficulty in any of the four parishes — a heating bill, a bed for a child, a fortnight's groceries after a redundancy. Awarded by trustees within ten days of application.
Read more
Fund No. 03
The Schools & Pupils Grants
Grants to Bardney and Bucknall primary schools for items not covered by the county budget — library books, a music tutor's small fee, an outing to Lincoln, a uniform when a family is between paydays.
Read more
Fund No. 04
The Quiet Door
Our emergency reserve. Single one-off grants made within seventy-two hours when something has gone wrong and the household cannot wait for the next trustees' meeting. Capped at £400 per case.
Read more
Three small ways to help
We do not need a hundred volunteers. We need three or four people willing to walk a lane.
Most of our work is done by the trustees. But there are a few practical jobs that need an extra hand — quiet, regular, the kind a person can do for a year or two without it taking over.
Companion-visitor, Southrey
Sit and have a cup of tea with one of the widows on our pension list. We pair you with one neighbour and you visit each month. No training required — just a kind hour.
Read the roleGrant-day note-taker
Help the trustees keep tidy minutes on the four grant days a year, and on a few smaller hardship meetings. Useful if you are comfortable with notes and discretion.
Read the roleWitham Walk steward
Our autumn and spring walks raise modest sums for the funds. Stewards meet the walkers at the bridge in Southrey and at the abbey ruins in Bardney with hot tea.
Read the role
Stories from the four parishes
Three small accounts, told with the family's permission.
Story · Southrey
"It was the quarterly pension that kept the boiler on through February."
Rosemary, 71, Southrey. Rosemary's husband Tom died in late autumn of 2023, two days after the heating oil had been delivered. She had not yet got round to changing the household accounts and the bill, when it arrived, came as a shock. Our quarterly pension — modest, but reliable — arrived the following week.
"I had a stack of letters on the kitchen table and I did not know which one to open first. The Kitchings letter was the one I opened, because the envelope was hand-addressed, and because I knew Geoffrey from the church. There was no fuss in it. Just a cheque and a line saying it was for the quarter."
Read the full story
Story · Bardney
"We were three weeks from a meter on the door, and then the cheque came."
Philip, 44, Bardney. When the haulage firm Philip worked for went into administration in January 2025, he had three children at home and a fortnight's notice. The Hardship Fund met within eight days, and his application — a single side of A4 written at the kitchen table — was approved.
"They didn't ask me to write a covering letter. They asked me to come to the parish hall on a Tuesday morning and have a cup of tea. The grant was modest. But it was the speed of it that mattered."
Read the full story
From the letterbox
All news & stories
Three recent letters from the trustees.
A hundred loaves at the Southrey bridge
On the morning of the spring fair we baked a hundred loaves at the Bardney bakery and walked them down to the bridge. Most were claimed by 10.30.
The Quiet Door and the January bills
A quiet note on a difficult month: how the small reserve fund met the costs that arrived after the Christmas accounts had closed.
A Bardney classroom where the rain came in
Why we paid for a temporary roof patch on the back classroom at Bardney primary in January, and what we have learned about the limits of small grants.
In their own words
Five voices from the four parishes.
"There is no fuss in it. There never has been. A hand-addressed envelope and a small cheque, four times a year, since my husband died."Rosemary, 71 · Southrey
"They asked me to come to the parish hall on a Tuesday morning. I was expecting a form. I got a cup of tea and a quiet decision."Philip, 44 · Bardney
"I knew the Misses Kitching by their portraits in the vestry. I never imagined that, sixty years on, their small fund would be paying for my heating oil."Evelyn, 83 · Southrey
"The Kitchings grants are small, and they arrive without fanfare. They have paid for a music tutor, a coachload of children to Lincoln Cathedral, and once a set of warm coats. We are very glad of them."Ruth Dawson, head teacher · Bardney CE Primary
"You can measure a small charity by how it treats the people it turns down. The Kitchings trustees write a personal letter to each one. That tells you everything."John, 58 · Churchwarden, Tupholme