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. His father (Robert Rhodes Allen, 1841–1927) and grandfather (Isaac Alden, 1770–1832) were both butchers.
Isaac Alden was 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. His father, William, had come from America to settle in Chipping Sodbury in the eighteenth century.
Leonard's grandfather Isaac Alden had taken on the tenancy of Eastwyke Farm by 1790, and it passed on to his son Robert, Leonard's father. The 1881 census shows Leonard as a child of 7 living at the farmhouse 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) followed their father into the butchery trade.
Leonard Alden was educated privately and then at the Oxford Central School. The 1891 census shows him at the age of 17, described as a butcher’s assistant; his older brother Arthur (19) is a butcher’s shopman, while his younger brother Stanley (15) is an apprentice grocer. His other siblings Reginald, Harold, Edward, William, Frederick, Eveline, and Winifred are still at school. The family had one servant.
In 1894 Alden married Emily Penn, daughter of Edward Penn, and their son Arthur Rhodes Alden was born in the same year. They continued to live at Eastwyke Farm and had two more sons: Leonard Stanley (born 1901) and Robert (born 1902).
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.
Alden was chosen as Mayor in November 1936 at the age of 63, and was also appointed an Alderman during his year of office. 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’s 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 fet 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