A small ledger of last year

Eighty-three households, four parishes, one quiet year.

Our impact is not measured in millions. It is measured in cheques posted, kitchen tables sat at, and quiet bills met. Here is what 2025 looked like for the Kitchings General Charity.

The interior of Bardney parish hall in late afternoon, chairs set in a small circle, a tea urn on a side table

83 Households supported

Across the four parishes, in pension payments and hardship grants taken together, in the year ending 31 December 2025.

£28,194 Disbursed in grants & pensions

Roughly nine-tenths of our annual expenditure went directly to households. The remainder went to printing, post, and the auditor.

£186 Median grant

Most of our hardship grants were between £40 and £400, with the median sitting at £186 in 2025.

9 Trustees, all unpaid

Drawn from the four parishes, serving five-year terms. They contribute approximately 410 hours a year, between them.

Where we work

Four parishes in the Witham valley, between Lincoln and Horncastle.

The trust's area of benefit is fixed by the 1964 scheme of management as the parishes of Bardney, Southrey, Tupholme, and Bucknall. The four villages and hamlets sit in a quiet bend of the River Witham, eight miles east of the cathedral city of Lincoln, on the road to the small market town of Horncastle. The combined population at the 2021 census was approximately 1,920.

Bardney is the largest of the four, with a primary school, a parish hall, a small co-operative shop, and the ruined Benedictine abbey from which the village takes its character. Southrey, on the eastern bank of the Witham, is a smaller settlement of long terraced cottages and the meeting place of the original Kitching bequest. Tupholme is now scattered between two hamlets and a single farmstead in the woods. Bucknall sits up the small slope toward the wolds, with its own primary school and its own quiet rhythm.

Bardney

~ 850 residents

The trust's administrative home. Primary school, parish hall, abbey ruins, the Wagon & Horses public house.

Southrey

~ 240 residents

Eastern bank of the Witham. The original bequest parish; nine widows on the current pension list.

Tupholme

~ 110 residents

A scattered parish of farmsteads and woodland, added to the area of benefit in 1937.

Bucknall

~ 720 residents

Primary school, village hall, and one of the trust's older annual collections at St Margaret's.

Grants & pensions paid · 2020–2025

Six small years, in pounds.

A quiet measure of the trust's recent work. 2020 is unusual because of the additional pandemic grants. 2024 is the year of the small reserve-funded overspend.

2020

£32,940

2021

£23,810

2022

£26,142

2023

£28,470

2024

£33,688

2025

£28,194

Who we work with

Eight small partnerships that make the work possible.

We are not a partnership-led charity. We do not run consortium bids. But the work would not be possible without a quiet network of people across the four parishes and beyond. Here are the small organisations who help us most.