We have, in the United Kingdom, a well-established and well documented tradition of provision for our old folk, predominantly charitable in origin and reaching back over a thousand years. The organisations providing this care are known generically as almshouse charities. In Almshouses: A Social and Architectural History Brian Howson outlines the development of almshouses, from their origins as medieval hospitals, adjuncts of the monastic system, through Tudor and Stuart periods, when the concept of the almshouse as a self-contained dwelling emerged, to Georgian and Victorian times when the provision became more urban than rural in character and philanthropic in sponsorship.

It has been estimated that over 2,000 separate groups of occupied almshouses in England have survived to the present day, generally in groups of four to ten dwellings. Most towns of any size, and a great number of villages, have one,or more groups, in many cases existing quite unnoticed by the general population, still housing the less well-off in society.