Frederick Leach: A Well-connected and Much-travelled Cambridge Artworkman

For Open Cambridge 2024 we bring you a talk from Dr Shelley Lockwood who will introduce you to the life and the beautiful and extensive work of Mr Leach of City Road.

Frederick Leach set up his firm of Artworkers at workshops in City Road in Cambridge in 1862. Over the next 40 years he travelled frequently by train and sometimes by steamship to estimate for, carry out and supervise decorative work in very many churches and grand houses all over the country, from Dundee to the Isle of Wight. From those workshops in Cambridge he also sent out small groups of workers – decorative artists, carvers, masons and joiners – with their tools and materials to stay at lodgings close to where they would be working. He communicated constantly with clients, workers, suppliers and family members by letter or postcard. These practical networks of an increasingly extensive and efficient postal service and railway system enabled him to run and develop his business, to be able to respond to demand wherever that was in the country and to work for some of the most prestigious names in architecture, design and the decorative arts – G F Bodley, C E Kempe, G G Scott Jr, Philip Webb and William Morris.

Dr Shelley Lockwood is a freelance public historian and author of Frederick Leach: A Cambridge Artworkman (Casita Press in association with David Parr House, 2021).

This talk is open to all and is free. Doors open at 7pm and the talk starts at 7:30pm. There is no advanced booking so please arrive early to be sure to get in.

The recording of the talk can be watched below.