The Reverend Martin Leigh M.A. (twice!), Vicar of Cheddleton in Staffordshire, died at the Vicarage on Sunday 29th October aged 65, 16 days after being diagnosed with advanced stage cancer.

Martin came to Aston in 1951 and quickly acquired the nickname ‘Tubby’ for reasons which stayed with him for the rest of his life. He left school and, accompanied by his close friend of those days – Malcolm Carpenter, went to Sheffield University to read Mathematics.

Whilst there he became a committed Christian and, after a short spell in Operational Research at the National Coal Board, he decided that he could best express his commitment by becoming a priest. To that end he went to Cuddesdon College where, by his own admission and standards, he ‘didn’t work very hard’.

His first Curacy provided him with a flat in Lambeth Palace where, amongst others, he met the girl who was to become his wife: Mary, a convent trained lass from Devon.

Parishes followed in Bakewell, Over Haddon, Ockbrook and Baslow, where Martin spoke fondly of a garden that ‘stretched down to the river’, and King’s Norton, of which Mary has less happy memories.

During this time Martin’s intellectual powers took him onto the church’s Board of Finance where he managed to keep his head ‘when all around were…. ‘, and the Redundant Churches Commission where he was met by another AOE, John Bowles (1950).

Vicar of Cheddleton and Rural Dean, Martin had decided to exercise his right of freehold and remain there until the age of 70 because ‘I am enjoying myself so much’. He was Chairman of Governors for the village school and was wont to teach the children chess, playing several games with them simultaneously. He also found time to study for an M.A. in History with Manchester University. The colourful academic hood to which this entitled him was to be seen worn proudly at Evensong!

So much for his history: Martin was much more than that. I have happy memories of many hours at school spent leaning on a windowsill that overlooked nowhere ‘shooting the breeze’ with him and the aforementioned Malcolm Carpenter. And of the time in ‘Big School’ when he demolished the local M.P. during a discussion of the Suez crisis (remember that one?). On a school exchange to Germany in 1956 Martin’s command of that language shone forth: his paternal grandmother was German and his facility owed more to her than to the efforts of the ’two Ernies’ (Entwistle and Pickering).

We last saw Martin at the Annual Dinner in 2004. Sitting at our table was a former King’s Norton parishioner and senior AOE, John Castle, and another AOE from Meir, the next village to Cheddleton. Despite his reservations about the School Song (which, with characteristic forthrightness, he had described as ‘pretty naff’!) Martin had re-learned it for the occasion.

I last saw Martin in July 2006, when he joined me on a visit to 94 year old Eric Pedley in his care home at Wolverhampton. During the conversation, between two devout Christians, Martin speaking of his ‘Boss’ said ‘He has been good to me’.

I think Martin would settle for that as his epitaph.

(For the Bishop of Lichfield's tribute click here.)