Leonard Henry Alden
Mayor of Oxford 1936–7
Leonard Henry Alden (1873–1937) was born in Grandpont, which is now in the south part of the city of Oxford but was then in Berkshire.
Alden's ancestors
- Alden's great-great-great-grandfather William Alden had come from America to settle in Chipping Sodbury in the eighteenth century.
- His great-great-grandfather was Thomas Alden (1745–1830)
- His great-grandfather Isaac Alden (1770–1832) was a butcher, and the head of the whole Alden dynasty of butchers and printers in Oxford. He had been a yeoman in the service of the Duke of Somerset (a gentleman commoner of Christ Church in the early nineteenth century), and had remained in Oxford after the Duke went down. He became a Baptist, and was warden of New Road Baptist Church. By 1790 he had taken on the tenancy of Eastwyke Farm. He married Martha Curtis in 1794 and they had ten children between 1796 and 1809, whose births are all recorded in the register of New Road Baptist Church. He himself was buried there on 16 September 1832
- His grandfather Thomas Amos Alden (1807–1874) was also a butcher, and founded R. R. Alden's butcher's shop in the covered market in Oxford. He had seven children.
- His father Robert Rhodes Allen (1841–1927) was also a butcher at Eastwyke Farm, and he and his wife Hannah had eleven children: Grace, Arthur, Leonard, Stanley, Reginald, Harold, Edward, William, Frederick, Eveline, and Winifred.
Leonard Alden
The 1881 census shows Leonard as a child of 7 living at Eastwyke Farm with his father Robert, his mother Hannah, his sister Grace (11), and his five brothers: Arthur (9), Stanley (5), Reginald (3), Harold (2), and Edward (7 months). There were eventually to be eight Alden sons, five of whom (including Leonard himself) followed their father into the butchery trade.
Leonard Alden was educated privately and then at the Oxford Central School. At the time of the 1891 census he was a butcher’s assistant of 17; his older brother Arthur (19) was a butcher’s shopman, and his younger brother Stanley (15) was an apprentice grocer. His other siblings Reginald, Harold, Edward, William, Frederick, Eveline, and Winifred were still at school. The family had one servant.
In 1894 Alden married Emily Penn, born in New Hinksey and the daughter of Edward Penn, and they appear to have started their married life in Cowley St John, moving to New HInksey by 1895, and then South Hinksey in about 1900. They had seven children:
- Arthur Rhodes Alden (born 1894 in Cowley St John)
- Nellie Alden (born 1895 in New Hinksey)
- Grace Morris Alden (born 1898 in New Hinksey)
- Leonard Stanley Alden (born 1901 in South Hinksey)
- Rodney Robert Alden (born 1902)
- Katherine Alden (born c.1905)
- Priscilla Alden.
The 1901 census shows Leonard and his wife and four eldest children living at Egrove Farm in South Hinksey. Leonard (27) is described as a butcher, farmer, and cattle dealer. By 1911 the family were living at Eastwyke Farm off the Abingdon Road..
Alden was President of the Master Butchers' Association, and acted as Cattle Judge in Reading, Northampton, Wellington in Shropshire, and finally at Smithfield (1935–6). His business was described as "probably the biggest butchering business under one roof in England".
Alden was Chairman of South Hinksey Parish Council from 1898 to 1908, and a Liberal Oxford City Councillor from 1919 to 1936. While on the council he was Chairman of the Farm Committee (1920-5), Vice-Chairman of the Watch Committee (1922–6) and Chairman of the Highways Committee and the Sewers and Lighting Committee (1931–6). In 1935 he was Chairman of Oxford Liberal Association.
In November 1936 at the age of 63, Alden was elected Mayor of Oxford (for 1936/7) and during his year of office was made an Alderman. The Coronation of George VI on 12 May 1937 fell during his mayoralty, and he attended the Coronation with his sergeant, as his wife Emily had been ill for a long time, and she died the next month.
On 21 July 1937, just three weeks after his wife’s funeral, Alden drove from Eastwyke to visit his son Robert at his farm at Wheatley Bridge, and was hit by a car when walking across the road between the farm and its yard. He died the same night in the Radcliffe Infirmary. His funeral service at New Road Baptist Church was attended by the Vice-Chancellor and many other members of the University as well as many members of the corporation. The Minister said at his funeral:
We see the passing of a type for he had lineage and descent … generations under the same roof … farming the same fields, and known and respected in the same city life…. And on that yeoman stock Leonard Alden grafted some new qualities. He did not rise in any pretentious way above it … he loved his flowers and his cattle, and his fields. He was a yeoman of England.
At a luncheon the Vice-Chancellor (Alexander Dunlop Lindsay) said:
I thought more of the Mayor every time I met him. You expect at the head of a great city ability, honesty, and shrewdness, but you will not misunderstand me when I say that you don't expect to find a saint. I do think our Mayor was, in a most straightforward sense, a saint… I felt that everybody in the city really must respect and love him.
Alden’s supermarket at Eastwyke Farm closed in 1986, and the land reverted to University College, who built a hotel on part of the site.
See also:
- Who’s Who in Oxfordshire, 1936, p. 5
- Oxford Magazine, 1937–8, p. 4 (obituary)
- Oxford Monthly, August 1937, p. 1
- Oxford Times, 23 July 1937, pp. 14c and 15fg (obituary and editorial)
- The Times, 29 July 1937, p. 15 (obituary)
- Clyde Binfield, "The Aldens of New Road: A Baptist continuity" in Rosie Chadwick (ed.), A Protestant Catholic Church of Christ: Essays on the History and Life of New Road Baptist Church, Oxford (Oxford: Alden Group Ltd, 2003), pp. 201-58
- Portrait of Leonard Alden in the Council Chamber Corridor of the Town Hall
- 1881 Census: Oxford (St Aldate), RG11: 1501/52
- 1891 Census: Oxford (St Aldate), RG12: 1167/20