The Charity of the Rev. Thomas Smoult

Thomas Smoult was born in 1631/32 in Lathom, Lancashire. He graduated from St John’s, Cambridge in 1654, became a Fellow in 1664 and a Doctor in Divinity in 1684. He was the first Professor of Moral Theology at Cambridge in 1683 and held various Church of England livings in Hertfordshire and Kent. From 1697 until his death in 1707 he was a Royal Chaplain.

Amongst his livings was St. Mary’s, Bexley, where he was Vicar from 1658-66. In 1703 he gave £100 to St. Mary’s Church “for the use and benefit of the poor, not for the ease of the rich, as his executors should think meet”.

His gift has always been used to support the education of Bexley residents. In 1709, the Church used the bequest to purchase two tenements with an acre of land in what is now Bridgen Road. The Church used the rental income to pay for the schooling of the children of poor inhabitants of the parish. In 1804 the church let the premises on a 40-year lease to the Overseers of the Poor in Bexley for an annual rent of £8. With the opening of the first national school in Bexley in 1809, the Church paid the rental income to the school. 

In 1879 the church passed the remaining assets and funding from the Smoult bequest to the newly formed Bexley United Charities. In 1883 the trustees of the Charities gave a 99-year lease on the Bridgen properties to a Mr Isted for £9 p.a. Mr Isted demolished the existing buildings and built four new houses on the site, which are now Nos. 12 to 18 Bridgen Road. During the 1960s the trustees surrendered their remaining interest in the site for a capital sum.

The Charity of the Rev. Thomas Smoult continues to support the education of young people in Bexley, but it has limited funds and therefore can only make a small number of low value grants each year.