Education pioneer still helping students 100 years after his death

The life of the Rev Edward Tucker Leeke will be celebrated with a special Evensong at Lincoln Cathedral tomorrow.

Rev Leeke was a pioneer in education in the city and the service at 5.30pm, marking 100 years since his death, will be followed by laying flowers at his plaque in the cathedral.

His legacy was the Leeke Educational Foundation, which still helps people today – in 2024 grants totalling £52,200 were made to 54 students.

“The focus of the Leeke Educational Trust had been supporting church schools.  For the last 37 years it has become making grants to young people whose home is in the city,” explained Mark Edgar, current Chair of the Foundation.

“The first two grants in 1988 were for an individual to meet bills from the Dyslexia Institute and for another with Muscular Dystrophy to buy a computer. “

Born in 1841, Edward Tucker Leeke was named after one of his uncles, his father William’s sister having married Admiral Sir Edward Tucker. 

Educated at home before being first a Scholar and then a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.  Ordained in 1867, he was also first a Curate and then the Vicar at St Andrew-the-Less in the city.

Christopher Wordsworth had become Bishop of Lincoln the year before the 1870 Education Act and threw himself into developing church schools and founding a theological college.  When the post of Chancellor of the Cathedral fell vacant in 1873, he recruited a friend, Edward Benson, to take up this work as his ‘minister of education’.

After only four years Benson moved to be the first Bishop of Truro, and it was Leeke who Wordsworth appointed in his place.   Leeke greatly extended work in the city which Benson and others had pioneered.

In 1889 he helped establish and finance a new Lincoln Church House and Institute on Christ’s Hospital Terrace.  Clubs and classes were quickly being held for about 500 members and 150 Night School Members. 

Three years later he founded a Continuation Day School (educating apprentices beyond school leaving age) in part of the Church House premises.  The school went through numerous reorganisations and did not close until 1946, 21 years after Leeke died. 

In 1898, Bishop King appointed him Sub Dean instead of Chancellor, a role he combined for a time with being hospital chaplain and, from 1902, Vicar of St Nicholas, Newport. 

He had been a residentiary Canon of the Cathedral for 48 years when he died at the Chancery on  May 25, 1925, aged 83.  He had celebrated early Communion and read the lessons at Choral Matins that morning. 

He had been married to Bishop Wordsworth’s daughter Dora for 45 years.  Four of their sons were ordained.  His sister-in-law, Dame Elizabeth Wordsworth, was also a pioneering educationalist as the first Principal of Lady Margaret Hall and also the founder of St Hugh’s College, Oxford. 

Leeke’s foundation has operated since the 1890s, now as the Leeke Educational Trust, with one of the trustees still appointed by the Dean and Chapter. 

Picture: National Portrait Gallery