Plain answers to ordinary questions.

The Pershore Nashdom and Elmore Trust is a registered charity in England and Wales (charity number 220012), incorporated by Memorandum and Articles of Association on the 13th of November 1937. Its three charitable objects, as set out in clause 3 of the Articles, are the advancement of the Christian religion; the general furtherance of religious education and knowledge; and the relief of poverty and suffering — all to be pursued in accordance with the Holy Rule of St Benedict. The Trust holds the small investment portfolio and any property of the community, and administers its modest annual income, which for the year ending 30 September 2024 came to £289,819.

No. The Trust is a legal body governed by five trustees and answerable to the Charity Commission; the community is a small group of professed Anglican Benedictine brothers, at present seven men plus two postulants, who live under the Rule of St Benedict and are subject to their Prior. The Trust exists to support the community; the community is the work the Trust supports. The Prior sits on the Trust as an ex officio trustee, but the four other trustees are lay men and women elected by the body of oblates and major donors for five-year terms.

Because they are the three homes the community has known. From 1914 to 1926 we were at Pershore Abbey in Worcestershire; from 1926 to 1987 at Nashdom Abbey, near Burnham in Buckinghamshire; from 1987 to 2010 at Elmore Abbey, near Speen in Berkshire. In 2010 the community moved into four rooms at Sarum College, Salisbury, where it remains. The name of the Trust, formally adopted in 1989, was a quiet act of remembering: we have moved, we have shrunk, but we are still — by the Rule — the same community that kept first Vespers at Pershore in May of 1914.

The Trust has five trustees. The Prior of the community is a trustee ex officio — at present, Dom Aelred Pickering. The four lay trustees serve five-year terms and are elected by the body of professed oblates and donors who have given more than £1,000 in the previous three years. The current lay trustees are Dr. Helen Awdry (Chair, since 2021), Mr. John Rushmore FCA (Bursar, since 2019), Mrs. Caroline Whitcombe (since 2023) and the Revd. Canon Peter Lansdale (since 2022). The trustees meet four times a year and publish minutes of all substantive decisions in the Annual Report.

Yes. pershorenashdomandelmoretrust.org is the only website maintained by the Trust. We do not have a Facebook, X or Instagram account, and we have not authorised any other body to fundraise in our name. If you receive an email, letter or telephone call purporting to be from the Trust and you have any doubt, please ring the office on 01722 424 800 during opening hours and we will verify it.

The Rule is a slim book — about ninety pages in most translations — written around the year 530 by Benedict of Nursia for a small community of monks at Monte Cassino in central Italy. It governs how a community is to pray, work, eat, sleep, study, welcome strangers, correct faults, choose its leaders and bury its dead. Its three great vows are stability (staying in one place with one community), conversatio morum (the daily turning of one's life toward God), and obedience. Its three great virtues are silence, humility and listening. It is not, in the end, a long book; but to live it well takes a lifetime, and most days we are still beginners.

The Daily Office is the round of psalms, scripture readings and prayers that the community keeps every day, summer and winter. We pray five offices: Lauds at 7:00, Terce with the Eucharist at 9:30, Sext at 12:30, Vespers at 18:00, and Compline at 20:00. Lauds, Vespers and Compline are sung; Terce and Sext are said. All five are open to the public in the Sarum College chapel, though most visitors come on Tuesday evenings, when Compline is sung by candlelight and a small congregation gathers.

Anglican. The community was founded in 1914 as an Anglican Benedictine house — that is, in communion with the See of Canterbury and the Church of England. Some of our forebears, of course, became Roman Catholics; in 1913 our parent community at Caldey did so as a body, leaving only one brother behind. We have, since 1914, kept the Anglican obedience. We are, however, on warm terms with our Roman Catholic Benedictine neighbours, particularly the brothers of Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight and Mount Saint Bernard in Leicestershire, and we share much of the same liturgical inheritance.

Yes. Compline is a public service; you do not need to be Anglican or Christian to attend, and we ask no questions at the door. Our individual silent retreats are open to anyone seeking a quiet few days; the only requirement is a willingness to keep silence in the guest house. Many of our retreatants are not formally Christian, and we have learned not to be pious about who comes through the door. The Rule itself requires us to welcome every guest as Christ, and we have no further requirement than that.

Write to the Guestmaster, Br. Crispin Hayward, at [email protected], with three pieces of information: the dates that would suit you, the length of stay (one to seven nights), and any dietary or access needs. He will reply within five working days with a confirmation, or with one or two alternative dates if the guest house is full. We can accommodate at most three retreatants at a time, which is why we ask for some flexibility on dates.

The published rate is £62 per night, which includes all meals taken with the community in the refectory. We ask no deposit. If this cost is, for any reason, beyond your means, please write and ask for a Pershore Hospitality Fellowship bursary; we have, since 2022, made these available without fuss and without means-testing, on the simple assurance that you would not otherwise be able to come. In 2024 we awarded 1,460 bursary retreat-nights at no cost to the retreatant.

An oblate is a layperson — married or single, ordained or not, of any age above eighteen — who attaches themselves formally to a Benedictine community and undertakes to live, so far as their state of life allows, by a personal rule shaped by the Rule of St Benedict. Oblation involves a period of postulancy of at least eighteen months, the writing of a personal rule with the help of an oblate director, and a public act of oblation in the abbey chapel. The most famous Anglican oblate of recent decades was the Most Revd. Justin Welby, who made his oblation at Elmore in 2004, before becoming Archbishop of Canterbury.

Yes — and most of our oblates do. Of the twenty-eight oblates currently attached to the community, twenty-one are married, sixteen have children at home, and all but two are in paid employment. A personal rule is shaped to the life you actually lead, not to a life you wish you led; for one oblate it has meant rising twenty minutes earlier to keep Lauds, and for another it has meant practising silence on the morning school run. The point is not to imitate a monk but to let the Rule shape, by small steady fidelities, the life you already have.

The Trust makes small grants of between £500 and £4,000 through the Cloister & Common Bread fund to foodbanks, hospices, refuges, homelessness charities and small community projects in the four counties of our pilgrim history: Worcestershire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Wiltshire. In 2024 we made 47 such grants, totalling £74,200. We also fund up to seven bursaries a year through the Dom Gregory Dix Liturgical Studies Programme for postgraduate students in liturgy, and one or two awards each year through the Anselm Bursary for Sacred Music at Sarum College.

You can apply if your charity (or, exceptionally, a constituted community group) is based and active in Worcestershire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire or Wiltshire, and if your project relates to direct material help to people in poverty, illness, isolation or homelessness. We do not fund: capital projects, organisations with annual incomes over £750,000, religious proselytism of any kind, animal welfare, or projects outside the four counties. Please read the guidelines on the Resources page before applying.

The Cloister & Common Bread fund has three application windows each year, closing on the last working day of February, June and October. Decisions are made by the trustees at meetings in March, July and November respectively, and successful applicants are notified by post within ten working days. We try, as a matter of principle, to write to unsuccessful applicants with a short note of explanation rather than a form letter.

You can give online by debit or credit card through our Donate page; by bank transfer to the Trust's CAF Bank account (details on request from the Bursar); by cheque made out to The Pershore Nashdom and Elmore Trust and posted to the office; or by setting up a regular standing order. We also accept gifts of shares and of property; please write to the Bursar for the relevant paperwork.

Gift Aid is a tax relief offered by HM Revenue & Customs that allows charities to claim back 25p for every £1 donated by a UK taxpayer, at no extra cost to the donor. If you have paid at least as much UK income or capital gains tax in the current tax year as the Trust will reclaim on your gifts, you may sign a Gift Aid declaration and we will claim the relief. A £100 gift, gift-aided, becomes £125 for the work of the Trust. You can declare on the donation form or by writing to the Bursar; the declaration covers all future gifts until you cancel it.

We are quietly grateful to those who choose to do so; legacies have, more than once in our history, been the means by which the community has continued to exist. The Trust's preferred form of words is set out in our small leaflet, A small candle, kept beyond a life, which the Bursar will send you by post (and never by email) on request. Bequests to UK registered charities are exempt from inheritance tax and may reduce the rate of tax on the rest of your estate; your solicitor will explain the detail. Please mark any correspondence on this subject private and confidential.

Yes, with thanks, though both require a small amount of paperwork. Gifts of UK quoted shares attract both income tax and capital gains tax relief for the donor; the Bursar will send the simple transfer instructions and a stock-transfer form on request. Gifts of property are accepted at the discretion of the trustees, taking advice from our solicitors and from an RICS surveyor; please write before making any commitment, so that we can discuss the practicalities with you in good time.

Only if you ask us to. The Annual Report lists, in summary form, the total income from individual donations, legacies and grants; it does not name donors. We will, of course, send you a personal letter of thanks. Some donors choose to be named as patrons of a particular bursary or fellowship; please tell the Bursar if you would like that, or — equally — if you would prefer no acknowledgement of any kind.

Write a short note to the office at [email protected], or — if you prefer — come on a Tuesday evening at eight and sit at the back of chapel for Compline. There is no requirement to do anything in particular. You may simply listen. Many of our deepest friendships with the Trust have begun in precisely that way.