In 1416 John Stone, rector of Tintinhull, gave by his will ‘to each poor person now in the almshouse of Yevele 6s.8d.'
Any residue after other bequests had been honoured, was for ‘the maintenance of the poor in the almshouse of Yevele lately founded’.
Subsequently known as the Portreeve’s Almshouses, the building stood on the corner of Union Street and South Street, on a plot now serving as a car parking area for the town council headquarters in the Town House.
In the seventeenth century it provided accommodation for three poor women who received fourpence a week. By the nineteenth century there were four female inmates. In 1910, the Borough Council provided new premises, known as Dorcas House, in Preston Grove, and while this was in course of construction, fire destroyed the former building.
Woborn’s Almshouses founded in 1477 by John Woborn and Richard Huett, in honour of St. George and St. Christopher ‘for the salvation of the soul of William Woborn’, a minor canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London who was brother of John.
This provided for ‘twelve poor people of both sexes equal in number, single, chaste, and untainted by leprosy’. Each received threepence weekly. This building was close to the Rackel stream at the foot of Silver Street. Its administration was in the hands of a Custos and two Wardens who were elected annually.
Becoming dilapidated, the building was replaced by the present one in Bond Street in 1860. Income for the original establishment came from the rents of houses and land, mostly in Yeovil, including three inns - the former George, the Three Choughs, and the Pall. Reorganisation in 1969 provided accommodation in eight self-contained flats, management being by twelve trustees who still appoint from their number a Custos and two Wardens as provided by the original founders.