Richard Hopkins Leach

For three centuries one family made an unacknowledged contribution to the life of Cambridge, first as cooks and inn keepers and later as artists and craftsmen. A series of Open Cambridge events will explore the untold story of the Leach family. [1]

Early in the 19th century a young man called Richard Hopkins Leach (1794-1851) walked from Cambridge to Cornwall – a journey of more than 300 miles – to look for work. He kept a diary of his adventures, recording them in pictures as well as words. His journal gives a vivid picture of the pleasures and hardships of travel on foot through the rural landscape also documented by better-known travellers such as William Cobbett whose Rural Rides became a classic.

Richard Leach’s travel journal for the years 1814 to 1817, with its descriptions, maps and sketches of places he visited en route, is one of many items on show to the public for the first time at the Museum of Cambridge as part of the 2014 Open Cambridge programme. These objects tell the remarkable stories of a family whose history was for almost 300 years intertwined with that of some of Cambridge’s most iconic buildings – from public houses to colleges.

Carefully inscribed in the pages of a small notebook, Richard’s observations reveal a young man fascinated by all that he sees around him in a country emerging from the Napoleonic wars. On his travels, he records meeting newly released French prisoners and encounters the suspicions of dialect-speaking locals in the West Country, who take Richard and his companion for deserters.

On Thursday 2 June 1814, while walking from Marlborough to Tidworth in Wiltshire Richard writes that he ‘was glad to enter the public house (the old Bull) our appetites being unusually keen with waiting so long for dinner we had an excellent relish for our bread & cheese & beer the landlord said it was long since he had seen a strange face & was sorry he could produce no better accommodation to the weary but he would sleep on long feathers himself if we would put up with his bed in deference to age we declined his offer….’

The reference to ‘long feathers’ is one of many compelling historical details. Short downy feathers produce the softest and snuggest bedding while long feathers with their sharp quills are less luxurious.

Richard returned to Cambridge where, half a century later, his second son Frederick was to found a small decorating firm that expanded to provide a wide range of skills and work in partnership with some of the country’s best known designers and architects. Among them were William Morris, father of the arts and crafts movement, and George Bodley, the Gothic revival architect.

At the Museum of Cambridge, an exhibition titled Cooks and Colours explores what’s known about the early generations of the family. At All Saints’ Church, the story of Frederick Richard Leach is unfolded with an emphasis on his City Road premises which were recently demolished for redevelopment.

The David Parr House charity recorded and salvaged what they could before the developers moved in. The exhibition at Michaelhouse showcases the photos of Hannah Boatfield who visited the various locations where F R Leach & Sons’ work can still be seen and recorded what she saw.

At least half a dozen generations of the Leach family are known to have contributed to the life of Cambridge, both town and gown. Their names rarely appear in the annals of history which inevitably focus on the powerful benefactors who indirectly paid their wages and the architects, interior designers and engineers who directed them.

[1] University of Cambridge