The Alms Cottages is a Grade II listed building in the Central Bedfordshire local planning authority area, England. First listed on 18 November 1975. Almshouse.
The Alms Cottages
- WRENN ID
- heavy-parapet-sage
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Central Bedfordshire
- Constituency
- Hitchin MP: Alistair Strathern (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 18 November 1975
- Type
- Almshouse
- Address
- The Alms Cottages, 10 and 12, Shefford Road, Clifton
- OS grid reference
- TL 163 389
- Coordinates
- 52.03644, -0.30467
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Alms Cottages are a pair of almshouses built in 1872. The door dripmoulds feature inscriptions: "Gleaner & Sower" and "Widows homes," which refer to two monthly magazines, The Little Gleaner for the Young and The Sower. The Rev. Septimus Sears, who was the editor of these magazines and the Minister of the Strict and Particular Baptist Chapel for 35 years from 1844, used the profits from the publications to help finance the construction of the almshouses. The cottages are made of colourwashed brick and have a pyramidal clay tile roof. They are small, single-storeyed, rectangular buildings with a symmetrical facade. A large four-light wood mullioned window with a slender transom is flanked by doors with six vertical panels and pegged cover strips. Each opening has a square label with an inscription, with the window label reading: "A judge of the widows is God in his Holy habitation." There is a central brick double ridge stack.
Local climate
The Alms Cottages sits in a drier-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 710 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 88% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 81% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 34 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 51% of listed buildings. Of these, 16 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- Sale history — 4 transactions since 1998
- No related consent applications matched
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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