Plymouth Astor Trust (VHS) Scholarships Bursary

In 1918 the Astors bought the Victory House Boys and Girls’ Club (or Victory Club) and in the mid-1920s they acquired the old Batter Street Congregational Chapel, 38 Looe Street.  They converted these buildings and linked them together to form the original core of the Virginia House Settlement. Their vision was to create facilities for the local people and to give opportunities for training, employment, entertainment and socialising. The VHS’s facilities included a meeting room, gymnasium, billiard and social room, a library, music room and a dance hall. There were smaller rooms where cooking, carpentry, dressmaking and singing classes were held; writing classes were held in the library.

In more recent years, the trust have sold a number of the buildings and invested the funds raised; it is the income from these investments that is used today to fund grants to local charities.

Since 2006, The Plymouth Astor Trust (VHS) has awarded nearly £409,000 in grants with 62 organisations benefiting. The Trustees have a wide range of experience in business, property, PR, Academia and Social Welfare. The Trustees are blend of youth, male and female. In 2019 Virginia House Settlement became “The Plymouth Astor Trust (VHS)” and intends to continue to support the less fortunate in the city for many years to come.

In 2023 the Nancy Langhorne Trust was closed and its resources transferred to the Plymouth Astor Trust (VHS). The Plymouth Astor Trust (VHS) is funding bursaries from the income generated from these resources.

Nancy Langhorne Astor entered politics in 1919 and was the first woman to sit as a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons serving as MP for Plymouth Sutton until her retirement from politics in 1945. In 1939 her husband Waldorf was elected Lord Mayor of Plymouth and supported by Nancy they served the city for five years during the second world war.

During Nancy’s parliamentary career she gained attention as someone who championed temperance, women's rights and benefits for children. Nancy supported the development of nursery schools for London's poor children, a project organised by Margaret McMillan. In addition to her usual philanthropic fundraising, she led ministerial delegations for the Nursery School Association, made speeches in parliament and in 1934 published a memorandum calling for the universal provision of nursery schools.

At the heart of her ‘women’s’ politics was a concern with poor households, a subject on which she was far more radical than most in her party at the time. She was passionate about housing and with Waldorf’s capital, built model homes for the poor of Plymouth (Mount Gould). She was also preoccupied with the education of the poor, sharing the McMillan sisters’ vision of nursery schools as a route out of ill-health and poverty. As well as founding some nurseries, she helped the McMillan sisters to establish a training college for nursery school teachers.