Our History

In 1969 Frieda Scott gave a gift of £170,000 to the Francis Scott Trust. Just after Frieda’s death her husband Francis transferred this to the Second Matson Ground Trust, a family charity which had lain dormant since its creation in 1962. The proceeds from the sale of the family’s interest in the Sotik Tea Estate in Kenya, which amounted to £128,000, as well as a £50,000 legacy from Frieda were also added to the initial endowment. Francis Scott estimated that with the addition of a legacy in due course from his own will, the Trust would eventually have a distributable income of £10,000 to £15,000 a year.

The first meeting of the newly named Frieda Scott Trust took place on 5th April 1974. For the first thirty years of the Trust, decisions on local grants were taken by an advisory board and then either ratified or revised by the smaller number of trustees.

In the fifty years of the Trust’s existence, around 150 village halls and playgrounds have received support for refurbishment and alterations to suit new needs and expectations. In the 1990s, for example, the Trust began to receive applications to provide disabled access and in the last year or two the Trust has begun to receive requests for improving insulation and installing solar panels. The changing needs of the local community can also be seen to be reflected in the emergence of organisations supporting food distribution, responding to both the current cost of living crisis and environmental concerns about food waste.

It was Francis Scott’s hope that the Frieda Scott Trust would eventually have a distributable income of around £15,000 a year. In the fifty years since then, the value of the Trust’s endowment has grown to over £10m, enabling Trustees to distribute an average of £275,000 to local charities annually over the last five years.

For many years, the Trust limited its grant giving to the support of people living in the former county of Westmorland and South Lakeland, but when the new unitary authorities of Cumberland and Westmorland and Furness were established in 2023, the beneficial area was extended to include the northern area of the new Westmorland.

The Trust’s funding priorities have also evolved to meet the changing needs of the community, but they are still recognisably in tune with the earliest aims of the Trust and Frieda’s own concerns.