Tourists drifting out of London’s Tate Modern sometimes find themselves peering through the gates of nearby Hopton’s Almshouses, a collection of 20 pretty cottages built around a grass courtyard which looks like a village green. If anyone asks what the place is, one cheeky resident tells them in a low whisper that it’s an institution for the criminally insane. Actually, Hopton’s is a little oasis of affordable housing for low-income over-65s, built in the mid 1700s by a philanthropist fishmonger for “the poor and decaying men of the parish”. Like many other elite men-only spaces it was slow to adapt to change, only admitting women in 2012.
It’s like winning the lottery, getting a flat here, says one resident, a former taxi driver. He lost everything after a divorce in middle age; moving to Hopton’s changed his life. This very watchable documentary introduces a handful of other residents too. Jenny, 92, cheerfully talks about a recent fall on a bus which left her with a sore back. Did she go to hospital, director Harvey Marcus asks from behind the camera? Jenny looks appalled. “No! I could get up and walk. Why make a fuss?”
