The cost of building amounted to £1,545 of which £495 was attributable to enclosing and draining the site and sinking a well. A sum of £3,200 in three and a half annuities was set aside from Corporate Funds as an endowment in the hands of Trustees, the interest to be used to pay for repairs and to provide each occupant with an annual allowance of £10 and one ton of coal. This allowance was increased from time to time and by the end of the century amounted to £25 for Liverymen (£23 for widows), £20 for Freemen (£18 for widows), and an amount not exceeding three tons of coal. The first occupants were chosen in March 1836 and consisted of one Liveryman and seven widows. The architect, MrGrellier, who had given his services free was elected in 1836 successively to the Freedom, the Livery and the Court without payment as a mark of the Company’s appreciation.

Subsequently a northern block of four additional Almshouses, making twelve in all, was added together with a Gate House with rooms for an Attendant and his family, for which a further sum of £643 was raised to pay the cost, and a further £200 of three and a half per cent annuities was transferred to Trustees from Corporate Funds as an endowment. Initially all occupants were Liverymen and their widows, later Freemen and their widows were eligible, and later still it became necessary to elect suitable applicants to the Freedom to fill the places. All had to be not less than sixty years of age and of good character and being in receipt of income not exceeding £20 p.a.

Until 1866 the Almshouses were open to King Henry’s Walk across the Garden and lawn, but in that year the road frontage was divided into eight plots for houses and let on a building lease for 99 years at a ground rent of £40 p.a. which was used for the benefit of the occupants of the Almshouses.

By the mid 1920s it had become apparent that the Almshouses were no longer able to fulfil the purpose for which they had been built and the consent of the Charity Commission was obtained for the sale of the site to the Jewish Board of Guardians in 1937, and for a scheme for the future administration of the proceeds of the sale and the investments in the Almshouses Fund. The Almshouses had lasted for just one hundred years.