Who was Lady Sarah Hewley? Hidden history of York

St Saviourgate has undergone considerable changes in the last 300 hundred years or so, but like other places in this city, its history is only half-hidden.

It’s a street with mostly 18th-century houses which today are privately owned or rented.

On 31 St Saviourgate, the house next to the Unitarian Chapel (originally built in 1692), there is a York Civic Trust plaque which reminds passers-by that Lady Sarah Hewley founded the chapel as well as the St Saviourgate almshouses, and lived in a house on the site.

The blue plaque to Lady Sarah Hewley

The Unitarian chapel is still there and the almshouses too, further along on the other side of the road.

In the chapel itself you can see Lady Sarah’s chair and in the vestry there are portraits of her husband and her. But who was Sarah Hewley?

Born Sarah Wolrych, she married Sir John Hewley, a prosperous lawyer, who was born near Selby. He was later to become a member of parliament for Pontefract and York.

Lady Sarah was an extremely wealthy widow with a vast estate. But to understand fully her legacy, we need to understand a bit about the history of this street where she lived from 1697.

My friends at the present-day Unitarian Church pointed out to me that St Saviourgate had long been the ‘street of Dissenters’ in York, that is, those people who from around the mid-to late 17th century onwards had wished to worship outside the Established Church of England, and who also had a special concern for education.

In 1901, this street had boasted a Plymouth Brethren Meeting Room, a Swedenborgian meeting room and in nearby St Saviour’s Place, a Salem Congregational Chapel.

Rev Stephanie Bisby, the present Unitarian minister, and some members of her congregation reminded me that York Central Centenary Methodist Church stands at the other end of the street. They also told me there had been a Sunday school opposite the Unitarian chapel, and that the building next to the chapel had housed the Haughton School from 1773 until it closed its doors in 1935.

The memorial to Lady Sarah

St Saviourgate is nowadays a prosperous York street. Apart from residential houses and flats, you can find offices, two firms of solicitors, a dentist’s and a Masonic Hall, and it still pays tribute to its roots as a street of benefactors. In particular, the York Central Methodist Church accommodates Carecent, providing breakfasts for homeless and disadvantaged people.

In 1700, Lady Sarah built an almshouse and funded charity schools in the city. And then in 1705 she set up the Hewley Trust. On her death in 1710, she left a landed estate the income from which was to support ‘poor and godly preachers for the time being of Christ’s holy gospel’. A plaque with an inscription on one of the present-day almshouses commemorates the original benefaction. By the end of the 18th century, most recipients of the Trust were Unitarian ministers; hence the close connection with Unitarianism.

Today, the Lady Sarah Hewley Trust still administers ten almshouse cottages next to the Jorvik Dig building (formerly St Saviour’s church). A current resident told me that the almshouses were originally in Tanner Row, but with the advent of the railways they were moved to St Saviourgate in 1839. The Charity Commission document cites the charitable objects of the Lady Sarah Hewley Trust as being ‘for the benefit of such deserving and necessitous children in the city of York; the provision of almshouses and pension to poor persons of good character who have resided in York for not less than four years; and for the benefit of the poor of the city of York generally’.

In his book Dame Sarah’s Legacy: A History of the Lady Sarah Hewley Trust, author Richard Potts chronicles how, the Trust has weathered complex legal contests over the approximately last 300 years. But in spite of many twists and turns, the Trust has managed to survive and can be said to represent a fine example of independent benevolence in Britain today.

David Wilson is a community writer for The Press

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