We are an odd race us English:

In a pub called the Charlton Cat, in the village of Charlton St Peter
near Pewsey, Wiltshire, toasts will be drunk next week to the memories
of Viscount Palmerston and the Reverend Stephen Duck. The Palmerston
who will be celebrated is not the one who became prime minister but his
great-grandfather, the first viscount, member of parliament, staunch
supporter of Walpole and a mighty landowner, parts of Wiltshire
included. And the Reverend Stephen Duck? Well, he may be largely
forgotten now, but he was in his day perhaps the most eminent figure
ever to come out of Charlton – even at one time talked of as a possible
poet laureate.
…
One of his poems, dedicated to Palmerston, describes the annual feast
at Charlton instituted by the peer in the poet’s honour. The gift in
Palmerston’s will of a piece of land produced the revenue which enabled
these feasts to continue. The festivities are limited to married men
who have lived for a substantial number of years in the village and
worked on the land. Next week the toast will be proposed, as it always
is, by the chairman-cum-master of ceremonies, who is given the title
Chief Duck. This year, as for several years past, this role will be
carried out, I’m delighted to say, by a man by the name of Fowle.

There’s an entire web of such oddities which cross the land: one from my home town of Bath is the St John’s Trust. It owns a substantial portion of the City (some say as much as 10% of the flats in the Georgian heart of it) and the revenues are devoted to the care of the aged in the City. Anyone on the electoral roll over the age of 40 can put themselves down for, when the time comes, a place in the assisted living building in the centre of the city.