Born on 28th April 1923, Leslie was the second child of John William and Evelyn Watson Cox. Leslie was born at Smithy Farm in the hamlet of Twyford, then part of the Calke Estate, where his father worked as the blacksmith. He was baptised on 3rd June 1923 at St Andrew’s Church, Twyford.
School days
Leslie attended the Twyford Church of England school, where he recalled that ‘discipline was strict and the teaching conducted on lines which I am sure would have been fully approved by Sir George Crewe of Calke, who owned the land on which the school was built in 1843.’ 1 Miss Brittan was only teacher at the school, and children from the ages of five to eleven were taught together in the school’s single classroom; ‘The highest number of children I remember there at one time was twenty two, and the smallest was five, three of whom were Cox’s. Mother used to say at that time that she deserved a medal for keeping the school open.’ 1
Miss Brittan would ride her motorcycle to school, which Leslie remembered would occasionally break down, causing her to arrive late. On her arrival she would find the children busy at their work, but ‘what she did not know was that we had someone standing on a chair looking through the window towards Willington to watch for her arrival, so we could rush to our desks at the last minute to give a good impression. If she was very late, we realised she would be absent for the day, and the look-out transferred to the window on the other side of the schoolroom to watch in the direction of Barrow-on-Trent for the arrival of the replacement. This was always a welcome change because discipline under the supply teachers was less strict. We also had a rather high opinion of them because they could play the piano with both hands, unlike Miss Brittan, who could only pick out the melody with one finger.’ 1
‘We always sang grace before midday dismissal and again when we re-assembled in the afternoon.’ 1 The school was across the road from Leslie’s home, and his father John allowed the children to play in his field in front of the Smithy; ‘There we played and sometimes on fine summer days classes would be held there under the shade of a large ash tree. Across the field we would often hear the sound of the hammer on the anvil coming from my father’s shop.’ 1
Leslie recalled that each week in spring his class would be taken on a nature walk around the parish, searching for early flowers and ‘looking for larks and plover’s nests in the open fields, and listening to the song of the lark as it rose higher and higher in the clear blue sky’. 1
The class would also make a trip each year to Anchor church which was a cave cut out, reached by crossing the river Trent at Twyford on the chain ferry boat. Leslie said that ‘it never had been a church, but was once the home of an anchorite, or hermit. Bluebells grew there in profusion, and the girls were allowed to pick bunches to take home’. 1
Leslie also recalled that the highlight of the year was the school’s annual coach trip ‘usually to the seaside, Skegness, Mablethorpe or Rhyl. We saved up pennies all year for the trip and I remember one year I was the richest pupil on the coach with ten old pennies, and being so unused to spending, I brought four pennies back home’. 1
Each year the school would celebrate important dates, such as Empire Day (now called Commonwealth Day) on the second Monday in March, when the children saluted the flag, sang patriotic songs, and Miss Brittan would give a talk on their responsibilities as future citizens of the Empire. Leslie recalled that ‘May Day was also celebrated but this had nothing to do with politics. In the morning the boys voted for one of the girls to be May Queen and she was crowned in the afternoon with a wreath of flowers. This was followed by a display of maypole and country dancing to which parents were invited, with the sound of Sir Roger de Coverley and other county dance tunes coming from a wind-up gramophone.’ 1
Miss Brittan would cook pancakes on an open fire for the children on Shrove Tuesday, who would then be given a half day holiday; ‘In fact, we seemed to have quite a few extra holidays, half days to commemorate important church festivals, and others for good attendance.’ 1
1930 Twyford school photograph1 Gerald Harrison, 2 William Eric Cox, 3 Sydney Hallsworth, 4 Charles Norman Cox, 5 Dorothy Kidd, 6 surname Flowers, 7 Leslie Cox, 8 Lu Peck
The church at Twyford played an important part of Leslie’s life, and his early childhood memories included those of the harvest thanksgiving: ‘The church was filled with flowers, fruit and vegetables, grown in the parish making a riot of colour.’ 1
After taking the eleven-plus entrance exam, Leslie was offered a place at Bemrose School in Derby, which was accepted. His parents would have had to agree to Leslie staying at the school until he was sixteen, compared to the official minimum school leaving age of fourteen at the time. The school was opened in 1930 and when Leslie attended it was a boys’ grammar school. Although owned by the local council, it was a fee-paying school but also offered scholarships to boys whose parents could not afford the fees. It does not appear that Leslie received a scholarship from the school itself but since records show that his parents were exempt from paying fees, some or all of the funding for his education may have been provided by the local Education Committee.
Leslie joined Bemrose School as a Year 1 pupil on 11th September 1934 and was placed in Form ΙΙβ2. The letter β suggests that this was a second stream form since α was reserved for the highest set.
Leslie would have received a ‘classical’ education at Bemrose, with Greek and Latin featuring strongly. The school was 5½ miles from Twyford and Leslie most likely cycled there and back each day.
The final form which Leslie was in at Bemrose was T17. The T stood for trānsitus and boys in this form were not destined for the school’s sixth-form, either because they were not academically ready or they had decided not to continue their education at Bemrose.
In their final year, the boys would sit the Matriculation Certificate Examination in the summer and leave Bemrose in July. This University of London General School Examination was considered difficult, and Leslie did not passed at his first attempt. In December 1939, Leslie sat the examination again and passed. He left Bemrose School on 21st December 1939, having attended for five years and one term. The school’s records indicate that Leslie left to work on his father’s farm. He was four months away from his seventeenth birthday, and the Second World War had just started.
Calke Abbey
In 1941, Leslie trained as an engineering draughtsman at a government training centre in Leicester, after which he worked for Rolls Royce in Derby for four years. Around this time, Leslie decided that he wanted to become a land agent so he approached Arthur John Hooley, the agent who managed the Calke Abbey estate. Leslie accompanied Arthur Hooley on Saturday afternoons and during his holidays. He was interviewed by Mrs Mosley, daughter of the tenth and last baronet Sir Vauncey Harpur-Crewe, at Calke Abbey and became a pupil in Arthur Hooley’s office at Ticknall in 1944.
With a new career direction, and while still working on the estate, Leslie enrolled at the College of Estate Management and Derby Technical College for a correspondence course, attending evening lectures at Nottingham and Derby. In the summer of 1949 he passed the intermediate examination, and two years later successfully passed Part II, graduating with a B.Sc. degree in Estate Management from the University of London.
As assistant estate agent for the Calke Estate, in January 1950, Leslie attended Derby Magistrate’s Court in a case of theft. Lead weighing 2½ cwt. (127 kg.) had been stolen from the dome of a forty foot-high tower of an old building on Church Lane, Swarkestone, which belonged to the Calke Abbey Estate. The defendant was a property repairer, and Leslie was asked to identify the lead in court, which he estimated to be worth £10. The thief was sentenced to one month’s imprisonment.
In 1956 Leslie moved to the firm of Shaw and Fuller, and by April 1958 he had qualified as a surveyor. When Mr Fuller left in 1960, Leslie became the agent for the Calke Estate. In this role, he organised the maintenance of the estate properties.
Leslie, his sister Kathleen, and brothers Norman and Eric, continued to live with their father at Smithy Farm, but in 1957 the family moved the short distance to Grange Farm, following the retirement of its tenant.
The reclusive Charles Harpur-Crewe died suddenly in 1981 and inheritance tax of £8m fell due. With the estate being worth £14m, this tax liability brought the risk of Calke Abbey and its contents being split-up and lost. At an auction held to raise funds, the Calke Estate sold various titles and here Leslie bought Lord of the Manor of Twyford for £10,000. He may also have purchased Lord Potlocks and Lord Stenson for approximately £2,000 each. Leslie explained that he purchased the title of Lord of the Manor of Twyford to keep it within the village where he believed it belonged. The title also came with feudal rights, one of which allowed Leslie to take ownership of several small pieces of common land within the manor.
In another exercise to raise money, the Calke Estate offered its tenant farmers the opportunity to purchase the land and farms which they occupied. The Agricultural Act 1947 gave the tenant farmers lifetime security of tenure so the properties were offered at discounted prices. Leslie and his siblings agreed to buy Grange Farm.
Leslie brought Calke Abbey’s situation to the attention of South Derbyshire District Council, who started a campaign to save it. In the end, Charles’ younger brother Henry Harpur-Crewe transferred the Calke Abbey Estate to the National Trust in 1985 in lieu of death duties, and the National Trust opened the house to the public in March 1989.
The troubles of Calke Abbey and the discovery of its contents by the National Trust led to the suggestion that Leslie should write a book: ‘It was Mrs Lucy Pegg, daughter-in-law of the famous gamekeeper Agg Pegg, who said I knew more about Calke than anybody’ 2 recalled Leslie. ‘I started jotting down memories about people and times at Calke and eventually put them all into order’. 2 Leslie’s typed notes headed The Hudson’s of Twyford cover 14 pages and formed the basis of a 26 page manuscript which became Chapters 8 and 9 in Over the Hills to Calke. The book was completed with the help of his sister Kathleen, and was published in the summer of 1989 under the pen name Leslie John Cox.
Over the Hills to Calke held the number one position in the ‘best sellers’ list compiled by a Derby bookshop for three weeks in August 1989, and remained in the top ten until 5th October. By June 1990, Leslie’s book had sold over two thousand copies. A second edition was published in 2000.
Councillor
From 1956 to 1967, Leslie was the councillor representing ‘Findern and Twyford and Stenson’ on the Repton Rural District Council. He served on the Housing and Planning, Public Health, and Finance Committees. During this time, Charles Harpur-Crewe represented the parish of Calke and Ticknall.
Leslie was also clerk of the Sinfin Moor Drainage Board. During a meeting in April 1977, residents, council officials and councillors said they were unsure who the Board were or what they did. Leslie reportedly ‘chided them for their surprising lack of knowledge’ and pointed out that ‘the Board was vitally concerned with land drainage and is frequently in touch with borough and county councils’. One member of the Board actually represented Derby Borough Council. 3
In 1979, Leslie stood as an Independent Candidate for the Ticknall Ward in the South Derbyshire District Council Elections. His campaign leaflet included the statements ‘I am a member of UPSTAGE which is pledged to oppose further devastation of the Trent Valley’ and that ‘it is my wish to preserve the rural character of the villages and to oppose undesirable development’.
Leslie’s 1979 election leaflet
The election was held on 3 May and Leslie was elected as representative for Ticknall. He became a member of the Planning, Environmental Service and Policy, and Resources Committees.
In November 1979, Steetley Minerals Limited wanted to extract more sand and gravel from a site at Barrow, which the county council did not approve. A government inspector conducted a three-week long inquiry into the company’s appeal against the county council’s decision and, as a councillor, Leslie was closely involved with this matter.
Leslie stood again to be re-elected for Ticknall in 1981. His campaign leaflet included the statement ‘my experience as a councillor has convinced me that politics should have no place in local government. Anything worthwhile achieved by the District Council has been through knowledge and common sense - not politics’.
By 1988, Leslie was the councillor representing Smisby, and in July was involved with a campaign by residents against British Coal’s plans to extract two hundred and six thousand tonnes of coal by opencast mining on a one hundred and twenty nine acre site at the village. The Planning Committee of South Derbyshire District Council deferred a decision until they had visited the site, but in criticising the delay, Leslie said ‘Opencast mining can make a bad area good, but ruin a pretty area.’ The campaign was a success and there was no opencast mining at Smisby.
Twyford
The small hamlet of Twyford remained Leslie’s lifelong home. He recalled that ‘farmers worked in harmony with nature, and crops were grown in rotation to preserve fertility. There was no rape of the land, hedges were never grubbed up to make ever larger prairie-like fields, but were carefully cut and laid and trimmed in turn. Land was kept in permanent pasture or meadow and herb rich meadows were everywhere. The word conservation was never used, there was conservation all around. It was a world where church spires, not chimneys and cooling towers, dominated the landscape.’ 1
Along with others, Leslie played an active role supporting the local community. During the annual Vestry meeting of 1951, the local schoolroom was reported to be in need of repair but no-one knew whether it belonged to the parish or to the Harpur-Crewe Estate. Leslie was asked to make enquiries at the Estate Office. The following year, Leslie was involved in ordering dustbins for the parish. He placed an order with a firm in Derby for galvanised bins which at the time were not readily available - ‘the present quality being not worth buying’. The galvanised dustbins were delivered to Smithy Farm in early 1953.
In addition to his other responsibilities, Leslie was clerk to the Trustees of John Harpur Educational Foundation in 1968.
Leslie attended each Twyford and Stenson Parish meeting, which were usually held at one of the parishioners homes. On several occasions between 1967 and 1987, the meeting was held at Grange Farm. Matters discussed included celebrations for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 (when Leslie was treasurer), flooding of Twyford Brook, highway problems, and various local planning applications. During a meeting on 4th July 1989, Leslie, then Clerk and District Councillor, read a letter which had been sent to the chairman of South Derbyshire Planning Committee on which Leslie sat as a member. The author of the letter accused Leslie of having a pecuniary interest in one application and wrote that he should therefore not take part in the deliberations of the planning committee. Leslie stated that he had proved he had no pecuniary interest in this matter, but since a revised application involved an access route which he was entitled to use, he had been advised that he may have a non-pecuniary interest. As a result, he had been prevented from attending a site visit by the Planning Committee. The minutes from the meeting record that ‘parishioners expressed concern about their elected councillor being debarred from representing them in this way’.
St Andrew’s Church
Located next to Grange Farm, the local church played a central part in the lives of the Cox family. Leslie was the church’s sole organist from the 1950’s until the early 2000’s and although this role came with a small salary, he always returned it to the church as a donation. Leslie was appointed secretary/treasurer for the church from 1953; a position he would similarly hold for over 50 years.
Leslie attended every meeting of St Andrew’s Church. As secretary/treasurer he was responsible for keeping the annual accounts of the church, which he presented at each annual meeting. On 1st May 1970 he was appointed as a trustee for the church’s Restoration Fund, and in 1974 he was appointed church warden - a position his father had held for over 50 years.
Leslie also kept two beehives in the churchyard, one for him and one for the church. Proceeds from the sale of ‘holy honey’ went towards upkeep of the church. In 1973, petrol needed for mowing the churchyard, a lime tree, and three rhododendrons were all purchased with proceeds from the sale of honey from the church bee hive. Leslie also always gave a jar of his honey to his fellow church warden who had lent Leslie his father’s separator.
During the annual church meeting of 1984 Leslie asked ‘for consideration to be given to his replacement as warden at the end of year’ but at the following years meeting the vicar was absent due to illness, so the two church wardens agreed to continue in their positions. In 1986 Leslie said that he would prefer not to serve as church warden after the end of the year, and this request was granted. However, in 1993 one of the wardens did not wish to be re-elected due to ill-health, so the vicar asked Leslie if he would take the position ‘perhaps on a temporary basis’. The vicar was due to retire and so Leslie agreed to take on the role again, and he remained a church warden for the next eleven years.
Following the death of their father John William Cox in 1974, the family gave a lectern Bible to the church in his memory. A set of stoles were also purchased from donations as a joint memorial to their father and his brother Charles Edwin Cox. The Cox family also expressed a wish that money given to the church in lieu of flowers at the funeral should be invested to provide a permanent income for the church in the form of an investment in government stock. This was agreed to during the annual church meeting and, with the aid of a further donation from the Cox family, 3½% War Stock and 4% consolidated annuities were purchased. The John William Cox Memorial Fund initially provided the church with an annual income of £82 but by 1983 had increased to £500. The fund continued to provide income for the church throughout the 1990’s.
On 20th February 1987, Leslie, his sister Kathleen, and his brothers Eric and Norman, wrote their wills. Each person appointed their surviving three siblings as executors and trustees of their wills. Also, each stated that ‘my Trustees and I have agreed with one another to execute Wills of even date and in similar terms and have further agreed that such respective Wills shall not hereafter be revoked or altered either during our joint lives or by the survivor of us’ and upon reliance of this agreement each bequeathed their estate to their surviving siblings in equal shares. However, the wills did not state what would happen when only one of them survived so it was inevitable that this agreement would have to be broken. William ‘Eric’ Cox died in 2003 and on 1st December 2005, Leslie, Norman, and Kathleen signed new wills. Again they appointed their surviving siblings as trustees and executors of their wills, and bequeathed their estate to the surviving sibling(s) in equal shares. This time their wills stated that if their siblings predeceased them, alternative trustees and executors were to be appointed and instructed to convert ‘all my real and person property...into money’ and ‘to establish and endow a continuing charitable trust which I should like to be known as The Cox Family Trust’. The income from this trust was to be used towards medical research, the hospice movement, animal welfare, and ‘the upkeep and maintenance of the fabric and churchyard of St Andrews Church Twyford’. Following Norman’s death in 2006 and Kathleen’s death in 2008, Leslie signed his last will and testament on 15th November 2010. After specific bequests of land, property, and sums of money, Leslie directed that proceeds from the sale of any remaining property was to be held by the trustees ‘upon trust for the Parochial Church Council of St Andrews Church Twyford’. However, since Leslie had already bequeathed all his land and property, after inheritance tax there was nothing left for St Andrew’s Church which had played such a significant part in the lives of Leslie, Norman, Eric, and Kathleen.
Later life
Leslie was very interested in family history and had a large collection of family documents and photographs. On several occasions in 1986 and 1987 he sent photographs to the Derby Evening Telegraph, accompanied by notes recalling his memories and knowledge of the local area. These photographs and the information supplied by Leslie appeared in the Derbyshire Diary section of the newspaper.
In early 2000, Leslie and his brother Norman applied to the Forestry Commission for a £2,300 grant to buy trees for a piece of land which they leased at a peppercorn rent to the Findern Footpaths Group. The land of approximately one hectare in Findern had originally been bought by the Cox family in 1946 as additional land for East Farm Stenson, but following construction of the A50 in 1996 it was deemed unsuitable for farming. Between 2003 and 2005, one thousand five hundred oak, ash, willow, hazel, and crab apple trees, all native to South Derbyshire, were planted by volunteers, and Stanthorpe Wood was created. Leslie said ‘we as landowners did the easy part; credit has to be given to the footpaths group which has done all the hard work. From a piece of problem land, an amenity for the community has been created.’ 4
In his retirement age, Leslie was agent to the Paget Estate in the North Leicester area, and was a trustee of the John Allsop Trust at Findern.
Leslie Carl Cox died on 2nd May 2011 at the Royal Derby Hospital. He was 88 years old. His coffin was taken to rest in St Andrew’s church overnight on 17th May and when it was carried into the church a swallow was seen to fly in and out again. A bouquet of yellow roses from Leslie’s garden was placed nearby. During the service on 18th May at St Andrew’s Church, Leslie’s favourite hymns Blessed are the pure in heart, The King of love my shepherd is, and Praise to the Holiest in the height, were sung by over 80 people. His memorial can be seen here.
Leslie Carl Cox, 2005
Leslie Carl Cox was my second cousin once removed.
1 Derby Evening Telegraph, 16th April 2007
2 Derby Evening Telegraph, 2007
3 Derby Evening Telegraph, 25th May 1977
4 Derby Evening Telegraph, April 2005