- T. A. Leonard, personal papers, B/CHA/HIS/16/11 GMCRO
- T. A. Leonard, Adventures in Holidaymaking, 1934, pp 24 - 25
- Bryn Trescatheric, How Barrow was built... Hougenai Press... 1985
- Minutes, Colne Congregational Church, May 1890, CUCO 7/1 Lancashire Record Office, Preston
- Bryn Trescatheric, Barrow Town Hall, 1887 - 1987 Titus Wilson, Kendal 1987
- Mark Bevin, 'Labour Churches and Ethical Socialism,' History Today, Vol 47, April, 1997
- Independent Church, Colne, letter to Arthur Leonard, November, 1894, Leonard family papers.
- Robert Snape, The National Home Reading Union, 1889 - 1930, University of Bolton Institutional Repository
- Ambleside Railway Bill, Select Committee Enquiry, 1887 Privileged Lakeland residents, including Ruskin vehemently opposed access for working class visitors.
- Westmorland Gazette, July 2009, Nelson and Colne Times, June 1891
In the final chapter of their story the dusty and dishevelled backpackers are searching for somewhere called 'the C.H.A. centre' in Dinan. They'd walked twenty miles that day. Invited to join C.H.A. guests for an evening of music, they decline. They welcomed a rare opportunity to speak English, but after a fortnight living out of rucksacks, their 'trampish' clothes aren't fit for company. The 'C.H.A.' turned out to be a outdoor holiday club, and a great deal more, founded in 1894 by Arthur Leonard, described in the Co-operative Holidays Association's records as a 'former Congregationalist minister'. (1)
Why was Arthur Leonard a 'former minister'? Had he been unfrocked? Had he lost his faith? Young men who've prepared for a life in church ministry don't, on the whole, set up holiday companies. Leonard's budget 'Cooperative Holidays' targeted the notorious 18 - 30 set, offering adventures and education to young people from all backgrounds. Hoping to overcome barriers of class, gender, income and faith, he founded some of the first outdoor education centres in Britain. Approaching wealthy philanthropists, including the Rowntree family, he was able to lease or buy rural properties in attractive areas. Young hostellers would share household tasks, and often helped with repairs and decoration. (2)
Arthur Leonard's pioneering educational project was inspired by his experiences as a Nonconformist minister in Barrow. Why Barrow? Take a closer look at this photo, taken in 1887, the year Arthur Leonard came to the town. Beyond the policemen's boots there is only bare earth. The filth of Barrow's many unmade roads and unpaved streets was notorious. The town celebrated Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee with a magnificent new Town Hall, serious unemployment, soup kitchens and free meals for hungry children. Intermittently, steel and shipbuilding prospered. The devastating recession of the 1880's had forced many out of work. Very few of Barrow's inhabitants were local. Economic migrants,including workers from Poland, many were sending money to their families all over Britain and beyond. Hostility between different ethnic and faith groups was savage. Contemporary accounts report half-built, unpaved streets, overcrowded rooms, unlicensed 'hush' alcohol shops, and obscene graffiti everywhere, scrawled by people of all ages and both sexes. In or out of work, young workers made their own amusements, usually involving too much alcohol. The Registrar General reported alarming rates of infection and inadequate sanitation. (3)
The Reverend Arthur Leonard was the very new Congregationalist minister. 'Reverend' might give the wrong impression. Arthur Leonard wasn't an elderly Victorian cleric. He was twenty-three. The disaffected young people of Barrow were his contemporaries. Instead of drunken oblivion, he introduced them to hillwalking in the Furness Fells. Older members of the community distrusted Leonard's politics, and, as they saw it, his increasingly unorthodox faith. Leonard suggested they read the New Testament. (4)
Spending his early childhood in Hackney, with his sister and widowed mother, Leonard went to school in Heidelberg and prepared for the Congregationalist ministry in Nottingham. Barrow in 1887 would be the ultimate culture-shock. Londoners, if they'd read the right books, knew it was grim up North, but Mrs Gaskell's Drumble (Manchester), had a solid bourgeoisie, an Athenaeum, a strong university, a handsome collegiate church, superb music and over two thousand years of history. Dicken's relentlessly grim Coketown (Preston) flourished as a centre of learning long before the Conquest. Barrow was an industrial orphan. (5)
In 1890, now married with a baby son, the twenty-six year old transferred to the Congregational Church in Colne. Warned about 'difficulties' in Barrow, the church in Colne welcomed their new minister. The Lancashire milltown was already a hotbed of radical politics. Perhaps it would suit him better? Traditionally, young men and plenty of women in the Lancashire mill towns would spend their 'wakes' holidays get wasted in Blackpool. Before long, Leonard was in trouble again, accused by church deacons of preaching socialism and trying to form a Labour church. (6) Leonard denied this, and again referred his critics to the teachings of Jesus. (7)
Despite the suspicion and hostility he faced from some church members, Leonard continued to offer young people new experiences, hilwalking in the nearby Bronte country. Cyclists - the boy racers of the 1890's - were invited to their own outdoor service (Leonard held a collection for the local hospital). Encouraged by his college tutor at Nottingham, Dr John Paton, Leonard was introducing millworkers to the National Home Reading Union. The closest modern parallel would be the Open University. (8) In Colne, young millworkers came to revere Wordsworth's poetry. Forty years earlier, Wordsworth himself and many other privileged Lakeland residents had vehemently opposed rail access for the 'toiling millions', especially the working classes of Lancashire and Yorkshire. In 1887, the chattering classes of carriage trade Ambleside had just seen off the latest attempt to extend the railway line. (9) Leonard promised the Colne millworkers a four day Lakeland holiday for 21s.
When the twenty-seven year old Prince William of Wales led a group of young homeless people to the summit of Helvellyn in July, 2009, he was following in the footsteps of Arthur Leonard. Almost 120 years earlier, in June 1891, twenty-seven year old Arthur Leonard led the Colne millworkers up the same mountain. Interviewed later, trying to describe the experience of a lifetime, one young man struggled to find the right words. At last, he managed to say 'It were champion'. (10)