Thomas Leach moved to Abingdon with his young family and opened a shop in Bath Street in 1900. He was a printer and sold books and stationery.

The Leach family went to Trinity Church and had a big influence. Thomas was a lay preacher and preached at Trinity and many free churches in Abingdon and surrounding villages. He also worked for the temperance cause and preached a famous sermon on temperance at Trinity in November 1909, where he calculated if the £22,500 spent on drink in Abingdon in 1908 were saved for three years, two hundred families could be taken from the unsanitary courts of Ock Street and moved rent free to good houses.

Norman, the youngest of his sons, died at sea in 1918, a wireless operator on the S.S. Arka, sunk by a German Submarine. William was badly injured in the trenches and died fairly young.

Two other brothers were well known in Abingdon and at Trinity Church. Frederick managed the printing works, while Victor managed the Bath Street shop. The printing expanded and moved from the back of the Bath Street shop to Ock Street in 1937.

The firm was well known for its clerical printing and had a dog-collared cleric as a logo for its clerical business. Leach’s offering envelopes were well known among all denominations, and how many church people heard of the town Abingdon-on-Thames.

Frederick was remembered at Trinity as being kind and generous. He produced and distributed Trinity News free of charge. He gave generously to surrounding churches and to the elderly and sick children.

Victor was a choirmaster at Trinity and a founding member of the Abingdon Music Society. In 1959 he laid the foundation stone of All Saints Methodist Church. He was also involved in the renovation and modernisation of Trinity Church, moving the organ and later reordering the church, replacing pews with seats.

References:
1. History of Trinity (Wesleyan) Methodist Church by D.B.Tranter.
2) Information by Jonathon Leach at https://www.abingdonfirstworldwar.uk/leach.
3) A Oxford Mail article when the Leach printing business moved from Ock Street https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/2091421.new-chapter-print-firm-illustrious-past/.

Thank you to St Helens and St Katherine’s for the ecclesiastical publisher’s advert. The other advert came from The Abingdon Free Press on the British Newspaper Archive in 1906.