Bideford Archive tells us of a curious custom dating back more than four hundred years which celebrated in Bideford every year on New Year’s Day: the distribution of John Andrew’s Dole. John Andrews was a 16^th century Bideford merchant and Mayor. In 1942, it was reported that he had made a ‘goodly pile by importing salt cod from Newfoundland’ and had ‘resolved to perpetuate the virtues of salt cod.’ 

When he died in 1605, John Andrew left two fields in Love Lane, off what is now Moreton Park Road, and the rent provides income for a charity with funds distributed among the poor of Bideford. The original rent was 3s 4d and, currently, Bideford College leases this field from the charity. In his will, he stipulated that the money, now known as John Andrew’s Dole, should be distributed on New Year’s Day. The charity’s objectives are for the ‘benefits of the poor of the town and parish of Bideford.’ The archaic meaning of the word ‘dole’ is ‘a giving or distribution of food, money or clothing to the needy.’ In 1681, Temperance Lloyd, a Bideford resident and later charged with practising witchcraft, was given 6d. 

From another John Andrew bequest, bread was distributed to the sick and aged on New Year’s Day. In 1858 it was reported that ‘the sum of £20 is annually applied by the Town Council in the purchase of 120 two-penny loaves, which are given to 120 poor people whose names are kept by the Sergeant-at-Mace.’ In 1949, sixty deserving persons each received a loaf of bread and, from the early 1960s, butter was included. However, this tradition stopped in the mid-1970s. 

Every year since the bequest was established, except during the Bideford plague in 1646, the trustees of the Andrew Dole Charity meet for their annual dinner. The founder allowed the trustees 5d per head to provide themselves with a salt cod and ale dinner; however, they have always paid for dinner themselves. The method of election of trustees is that whenever a trustee dies, if there is a son in the family who is able, he is elected to succeed his father. In some cases, a trusteeship has been handed down from father to son for several generations. Where there is no eligible son, the trustees fill any vacancy from among the leading townsmen – as yet there are no women involved.