Freda Birchall & Tom Leach
Parents of Trevor Leach
and grandparents of Karen & Richard Leach
Freda's family was from Manchester and Tom's family lived in Wigan.
Freda went to shorthand and typing training. She worked for ? When she left the firm, they gave her a beautiful fillagree mirror as a leaving present.Freda Birchall met Tom Leach (1931 or before) at Gerrard's Tea Room on Boxing Day evening where they had a meal and a dance. She was there with Irene and Edgar. It was Edgar's idea for Tom to come as a date for Grandma. Edgar used to dance with Grandma before she knew Tom. Edgar Snelson married Irene Leach and Tom was Irene's brother. Grandma said about her relationship with Tom, "we fit in right away and all the time." Grandma was wearing a pink blouse on this Boxing Day. "Box you Pink" became a special saying between them.
Tom and Freda liked to ride their tandem together into the countryside. They went on lots of holidays together before they were married. There are lovely small black and white photographs on black pages in black albums that document them.
EARLY HOLIDAYS
A 1931 small album has titles: Prestatyn, Llanberis, Aber, Bull Bay, Pwllhelia, Abershoch Bay, Bodnant, Colwyn, Pwllycrochan Woods, Rhos on Sea. The photos show Freda and Tom as well as Freda's mother and another lady. Freda kept a metal tag which must have been made after a special time in Wales in 1931. It says, "COLYWN. 19.9.31. TOM & FREDA. HAPPY TIME."
Another small album 1931-1933 includes Ringley, Bodnant (Tal-Y-Cafn) from their 1931 holiday as well as 1932 photos from Dovedale, Afon-Wen, Llaneilian Bay, Tre-ardur Bay, Gaerwen Junction, Llandudno, which include Tom and Polly Birchall and Frank Henshaw. Their 1933 photos in the same album include: Freshfield, Hoylake, Wrightington Lake, Bosley, Rudyard, The Bolton Moors, River Ceiriog, a postcard from West Arms Hotel in Ceiriog, Lake Vyrnwy, Afon Nadroedd Pass.
A third small album includes: Southbourne, West Ludford, Iford, ChristChurch, Winchester, Llanharmen Dyffyyn Ceirriog. Polly, Tom, Frank, Alice and Jim are included in some photos.
Their 1935 album from a holiday in the Isle of Man has photographs from Douglas, Peel, Niabyl, Sulby, Bride, Point of Ayre, Frank Henshaw is included in some photos. The same album includes: Nether Alderley, Stretton, abergwesyn, Irfon Pass, St Peter's College (Lampeter), Aberayron, Llangranog, Morfa, Nevern, St Davids Cathedral, Nolton, Rhydyfelin, Borth, Falls Einion, Llanbrynmair.
Their 1936 album includes: Kilkeel, Carlingford Lough, White Park Bay, Maguire's Bridge, Fivemile Town, Lough Erne, Strabane, Ballyshannon, Lough Esk, Bellarena, Londonberry, Dunluge Castle, Giant's Causeway, Cushendun, Glendun, Glenariff. 1937 photos include ones from Baddenthwaite, Crianlarich, Loch near Craiga, Near Aberfeldy, Loch Earn (St Fillans), Comrie Bridge, Glencoe, Ballahulish (Loch Leven), Loch Awe, Kyles of Bute, Arran, Loch Lomond, Anwoth Church, Gretna Green, Crianlarich, Wastwater. The back page of the album says: "Freda Birchall, 34 Bingham St, Swinton, M/C".
In 1937, Freda's notebook says that they went on Thursday 17th June to Windermere, Ambleside, Rydal Water, Keswick, Basenthwaite.On Friday they were in Carlisle, Gretne Green, Abington for lunch, Sterling (fine city), Callender, Trossache for tea, Loch Vennacher and Loch Kaitrine, Crianlarich.A large 1938 album includes: Norton Church, Stokesay Manor House and Castle, Pen-Y-Careg Dam in Elan Valley, Wye Valley near Chepstow, Tintern Abbey, Towy Valley, Llanthony Abbey in Ewyas Valley, Credenhill, River Towy, Solva in Pem, Roch Castle, Devil's Bridge, Plynlimon, Cader Idris, Teifi Valley, The Ystwyth, Snowdon, Tal-Y-Llyn, Cymerall Falls, Clyn Lledr, Aberayron, Aberdovey, Vale of Ffestiniog, Enion Falls, The Tiefi at Cenarth, Moelfre, Beaumaris Castle, Ramparts and Jail.
A 1939 album includes photographs of: Wells, Dulverton, a Devon highway, A Devon lane, Woody Bay, Horse Stables, Combe Martin, Hangman's Point (Combe Martin), Parracombe, Cottage near Arlington Court, Bray Valley, On Exmoor, Haymakers, Stoodleigh, Withypool, Watermouth Harbour, Ilfracombe, Clovelly, Barnstaple from air, Taw estuary from air.
Freda Birchall
b. 28 September 1910
St Ancoats, Manchester
d. 18 August 2006
Buxton, Derbyshire
Saturday, 11th May 1940
Saint Catherine's Church, Birtles, near Chelford, Cheshire
Wedding of Freda Birchall and Tom Leach
11th May 1940
Front Left to Right: Alice & Jim Henshaw, Mabel/Rebecca Leach, Deborah Leach, Maid of Honor, Freda, Irene, Polly Birchall
Middle Row Left to Right: Frank Henshaw, Tom Leach, Tom Birchall
Back Left to Right: two friends
WEDDING
Their wedding took place at quaint Saint Catherine's Church in Birtles, Cheshire. They borrowed her father's car to go on their honeymoon. It was too far to go to Scotland so they went to Wales. Freda's notebook says that on 11th May 1940 they were at "Birtles, Middlewich, Shrewsbury, Pulverbatch for tea, Knighton". On 12th, they were at" Kington, Brecon, Llandovery for tea". On 13th, they were in "Cwrty Cadno, Ystrdffin, Llandovery, races in the afternoon, Llandadock, Llandovery". On 14th May, they were in "Pumpsaint, Lampeter, Aberayron, Newquay, Pandy (delightful lane walk), Lampeter".
After they were married, Freda and Tom went to live at 3, Pine Street, Pendleton. They lived with Tom's mother, Rebecca Leach, who died in 1943. It was a little terrace house - 2or3-up and 2-down and an attic.
WORLD WAR II
Tom was in the airforce during World War II and was stationed at Lossiemouth. It was too far to go home to Salford on weekends so he went fishing. Tom went all the way up to Ayre in Scotland to fish. Tom was a natural fisherman as he watched the fish to see what they were eating so he knew how to catch them.
While he was fishing in Ayre, Tom got caught by a water baliff as he didn't have a fishing license. The man was Vic Wraith. He invited Tom to come home with him and to cook his trout.VIC + NANCY WRAITH
Vic and his wife Nancy became very good family friends. Their daughter Jean was married to David Glaister and they stayed with them at 3 Pine Street. They later had a pub in Wales. Their other daughter Jonnie loved horses and lived in Buckinghamshire. Vic and Nancy owned an upscale confectioner's in Ayre and had beautiful window displays.During the year, Freda would write letters to correspond with Vic and Nancy and Jean. While Trevor was young, they would go up to Ayre for a holiday and stay with Vic and Nancy.
at 3 Pine Street, Pendleton, Salford.
The green plant wall stand hanging on the wall was later in Freda Leach's house
and then came to be in Los Angeles.Grandma said, "We used to love the tandem, riding around Cheshire." They sold the tandem in Blackpool to get money to buy a car. Grandma did a lot of photography and she used a Kodak camera with bellows.
Tom loved helping the farmers with insurance. Tom loved to go fishing. He joined the RAF and he really enjoyed his work during the war. Tom was stationed in Scotland for some of the time. He worked on radar and taught Canadians how to use radar that was very new technology.
Grandma said about Tom, "He wanted his son and he got his son." Trevor was born March 17th 1946. Trevor Leach is the only child of Freda Birchall and Tom Leach.
BUXTON
Tom and Freda moved in 1950 to Buxton. Trevor was four years old. Grandma stayed with Trevor in Pendleton while Tom looked for a house in Buxton. Tom stayed at the Griff Guest House in Buxton. A man who was in insurance and was being moved said to them, "You want a house and I've got one." Grandma said about this, 'Surprising how things work out to suit you sometimes, isn't it?' This house was 2 Mosley Road where Grandma lived ever since. The solicitor, Mr Nesbit, provided the mortage. The Prudential insurance policy paid the mortage off after Tom passed on in 1957.
Trevor's memories of arriving at 2 Mosley Road in 1950: "My parents loved the countryside and did not want me to grow up in a city with its pollution and crime. So my Father moved his job from Salford (a deprived area adjacent to the city of Manchester)
to Buxton (a market town in the country - in the county of Derbyshire). In Salford, we lived in a small terraced house with no garden. My parents bought a detached 3 bedroom house in Buxton with a garden. The day we moved I was so happy (at age 4) to walk round the garden that was very colourful and overgrown with nasturtiums and in the back were large rhubarb plants and fruit bushes. The contrast with Salford was very dramatic.
By the side of the house were grids providing ventilation under the floors of the house. In one of thes grids, I found a hedgehog and we fed it with a saucer of milk outside the front door. This was a very wonderful thing for me to witness and made a big impression. I was later to find frogs and toads in the garden. I was now living in the country and appreciating the wildlife and all the birds such as blackbirds, thrushes, sparrows, blue tits, great tits, jackdaws, robins, chaffinches and magpies living in the surrounding trees and bathing in our bird bath and feeding from our lawn. This was a very different world and transformed my life for the better."
They had a dog called Tramp. He had followed Peggy and Arthur from the Goyt and Tom and Freda adopted him. Tramp didn't like car travel. Trevor recalls their friends and neighbors the Gibson's ahd two dogs, Fruckie and Peter.
Trevor liked his primary school in Buxton very much. This was Hardwick Square School where they had lovely teachers. From age eleven to sixteen, Trevor attended Buxton College. He didn't like it there as much. There was a big turnover in maths teachers and he probably had 20 different ones!
Tom loved living in Buxton. He gardened and grew fruit in their back garden behind the garage - such as rhubarb, gooseberries, and bilberries. Grandma loved to bake and she made deep fruit pies - bilberry, apple and gooseberry pies. They also grew mint and made home-made mint sauce. They cut up the mint in a mint machine and added sugar and vinegar. Grandma loved mint sauce with lamb (her favourite meat). Tom liked growing pansies and violas in the long oval beds near the roses in their back garden and he would collect the seeds from the flowers so that he could plant more.
Trevor recalls happy times growing up keeping sticklebacks and crayfish and helping his Dad make hanging baskets:
"My father, Thomas Leach, put a glass aquarium on the cement stand outside the kitchen window at 2 Mosley Road. I caught sticklebacks in the Gardens Lake, they made a nest in the tank and proceeded to have babies. I fed them with little red worms using a pippet for eyedrops. I also caught crayfish in the walls of the Gardens Lake and kept them in a larger concrete tank in our garden.
My father used to make baskets from reeds which he plaited and I collected moss to line the baskets. The baskets were hung outside the house by our front door. I remember doing this at Dolgoch Farm in Wales and then bringing them home. I collected the moss along the railway tracks of the Talyllyn Railway."
Tom was Superintendent of an Assurance Company. Grandma had a very busy life at 2 Mosley Road because insurance people were always coming to stay. In the school holidays, his Dad took Trevor in the family car all around Derbyshire to farms which were insured with the Prudential. Trevor and his Dad also did some fishing together.
Each Bonfire Night (5 November) they would walk to the large bonfire that was at the Reck behind London Road (school football fields). They'd have homemade Sticky Parkin (with treacle and oatmeal) that was so moist.VISITING WITH THE BIRCHALLS
Tom, Freda and Trevor would drive to Swinton to see Polly and Tom Birchall regularly. They'd drive via Longhill (Goyt Valley adn countryside) and via Pendlebury. Freda woudl do baking to take to her parents. At Christmas, she would take a big Christmas cake that she had made.
When Freda's Mum and Dad came for tea at 2 Mosley Road she gave them have tinned salmon. Freda said it was always a treat to have tinned salmon.
FAMILY + FRIENDS
Freda, Tom and Trevor would go to see Grandad and Grandma Birchall who lived at ?. They had a neighbor, Lily Morrisey. Trevor remembers playing with her daughters.They used to see a lot of Auntie Alice and Uncle Jim Henshaw, and their son, Frank. Auntie Alice was Polly's sister (Trevor's great auntie). They would come round for tea. When Trevor and his Mum and Dad went round to Auntie Alice's for tea, she would often give them smoke haddock.
Frank (Freda's cousin) was a hairdresser with his father in a shop in Sale. In the early 1960's, Uncle Frank went to Scotland with Freda and Trevor for a holiday. Frank used to love playing the piano and could play beautifully, but he did not play much after his mother passed on. He was a gentle man.
Frank had a penpal called Roy Miller and they wrote regularly to each other. Roy worked as a wireless operator on a cargo ship and he was a member of the hundred club (having visited over a hundred countries). He lived in Tujunga, California. Roy sent postcards to Frank from the different parts of the world he visited. He taught Trevor how to play draughts and fox and hounds (with draughts). Once when Roy visited England, he stayed at 2 Mosley Road with Freda and Trevor. .
Roy sent a postcard to Frank from his home in November 1950 with a photo showing his car.
Edgar (Tom's brother-in-law) gave Freda a radio as a gift, after Tom passed on. Freda really enjoyed the company of the radio. It was kept on the top of the bookshelf (made by her father) underneath the hatch in the living room.
HOLIDAYS
The three of them had a family holiday in the Isle of Man in 1950's. It was the first time that Grandma had flown in a plane. They stayed at a guest house on the front in Peel. The owner of the house had a boat and he took them out fishing.The family used to go to Dolgoch Farm in Wales which Tom and Freda had found on their honeymoon. On these holidays there would be Trevor and his parents, Frank Henshaw and his parents (Alice and Jim) and Freda's parents. They loved going there and spending time with Nancy and Idris Jones and Nancy's mother, Mrs James. Grandma's dad used to get up early and go round the farm mending gates and doors. Trevor used ot get up early and go out with the shepherd (he had one hand and one hook).
The family also loved their holidays in Scotland. The man who owned the West Highland Hotel (where they stayed at Mallaig), was Mr Mc Lellan. He took Trevor out on his boat and they caught fish which was served at the hotel.
In 1956, it cost them one pound two shillings and two pence for bed and breakfast at the West Highland Hotel! According to Freda's notebook, they left on 8th August from Buxton and Swinton. By 4:10am, they were in Carlisle for a second breakfast. By 2pm, they had reached Ayr. On 9th August, They were to Paisley, Irskine Ferry, lnch on Loch Lomond, Fort William, Glen Finnan and Lochailort. On 10th August, they took the road to the Isle to Mallaig and walked to Loch Ghille Ghobaich. "Trevor and Mummie on Clansman sail to Loch Hourne" while tom fishing on Loch Morar. On 18th August, they returned home.
While Tom went fishing each day on the lochs with a ghillie, Freda and Trevor went out on Bruce Watt's boats. It only cost them ten shillings for the two of them for an all day trip on the boat, including a cup of coffee in the morning and a cup of tea in the afternoon. Trevor worked on the boats helping with the steering and tying up with the ropes and serving the drinks. They thought the rough seas were fun and they both liked it.CHRISTMAS
Trevor remembers that his mother would put lots of fun sweets hanging from their little Christmas tree. There would be Turkish Delight, Nougat bars (both pink and white), Fry's Cream Bars, Cadbury Flakes, Fudge Bars, as well as satsumas. They would decorate with robins and big baubles. Pumps were used to blow up balloons to go into the corners of the lounge. They made crepe paper fringes and twisted them to create colourful garlands.
Trevor recalls the food being pigs' trotters, toasted slices of bread on the open fire. Tom got chestnuts to roast on the open coal fire.
ARTHUR
Tom's best friend from childhood was Arthur Tomkins. They had gone to school together and shared a love of nature and the outdoors. Arthur told Trevor about how entrepeutenial Tom was at an early age. Tom and his sister Irene had to leave school very early (around twelve) to earn money. Irene worked in a flower shop and Tom worked in an office. Arthur narrated how Tom deviced a way of earning extra money by delivering mail on his bike to save money for companies on stamps for local deliveries. Perhaps Arthur helped him.
Arthur also said that before WWII, Tom and his father-in-law (Tom Birchall) set up a very successful travel business. Tom saw that employees were getting more time off work and would need to have holidays organized for them (such as bus trips to the seaside called Charabangs). Unfortunately, the war intervened and Tom found himself in the RAF. This turned out well for Tom's education and he was trained by the RAF to be a navigator. This training prepared him get a job at the Prudential Insurance Company. He was promoted to superintendent because he was an excellent salesman and topped the national sales figures on a number of occasions.
Arthur was an outstanding cylist and used to cycle for the world famous Manchester Wheelers. Trevor used to visit Arthur regularly in Abbey Village, when Trevor made trips to the UK from the Isle of Man and was pleased to hear that Arthur was still cycling into his 90's, doing over 70 miles every week. He would enjoy cycling to a pub for lunch and then back home again.
Arthur was first married to Joan and had a son and then they divorced and then he married Peggy. He and Peggy attended Trevor and Rosalind's wedding in 1968. Arthur enjoyed the outdoors and cycled into his 90s. He liked to sketch and loved his dogs.
Arthur remained a close family friend until he died on 1st March 2009. We called him Uncle Arthur. Trevor would visit him at his home in ??
CATS + DOGS
Freda grew up with cats as the Birchalls liked cats.Tom loved dogs and didn't like cats as they killed birds. Tom loved his birds and particularly the bluetits that nested in their garden. They'd watch the progress of the baby birds.LAST HOLIDAY
They went to Scotland in July 1957. There is a black and white photo of Tom with Vic Wraith.
Tom died at age 45 in Buxton Hospital on 17th December 1957. Trevor was twelve years old. He and his mother took care of each other and were great pals.
