Catalogue description Leonard Cheshire

This fonds contains material produced by UK based disability charity Leonard Cheshire. It includes correspondence, minutes, reports, publications, photographs, audio visual material, marketing and promotional materials documenting the development of the charity in the UK and internationally since 1948.

This fonds is split into 5 subfonds:
LCF: UK Leonard Cheshire UK
LCF: INT Leonard Cheshire International
LCF: AV-S Leonard Cheshire Sound
LCF:AV-F Leonard Cheshire Film
LCF:PHO Leonard Cheshire Photographs

RCF Ryder-Cheshire Foundation

LCF:SC/Gibb Margot Mason Gibb

LCF:SC/Ramsbotham Sir Peter Ramsbotham

GLC Group Captain Geoffrey Leonard Cheshire

Leonard Cheshire

Reproduction of and access to certain items from this fonds are governed by copyright and data protection legislation and may be restricted. Access to items less than 30 years old is closed.

Future accruals are expected

• Charities
• Disability history
• Social change
• Humanitarian assistance

Box lists in Excel are available for consultation at the Leonard Cheshire Archive at the discretion of the Archivist.

The charity Leonard Cheshire was founded in 1948 by Group Captain Lord Cheshire VC OM DSO DFC, the most decorated bomber pilot of the Second World War. He gave a home to a dying man who had nowhere else to go, and found others coming to him for help. By 1951 a trust called The Cheshire Foundation Homes for the Sick had been established to run this Home in Hampshire through a committee, and a second Home was established in Cornwall.
In March 1952 the remit of the original Trust was expanded so that it became a general advisory body which would be responsible to the public for the use of grants and donations and also a legal entity to which properties could be conveyed. The Trust was incorporated as a limited company in 1955. Documents in the archive suggest that the organisation was originally granted charitable status as early as 1953, but as neither the Charity Commission nor the organisation have been able to verify it formally, the date for registration as a charity normally quoted is 1985. The name was formally changed to The Leonard Cheshire Foundation in 1976, to Leonard Cheshire Disability in 2007 and Leonard Cheshire in 2017.
The first overseas Home was opened near Bombay in 1956. By 1970 there were five more projects in India, 50 in the UK, and a Leonard Cheshire project of some kind in 21 other countries worldwide.
From the beginning the charity has worked to provide services for disabled people of all ages, races and creeds, and to work with them towards greater opportunity and independence. Throughout, the charity has attracted and retained the services of more volunteers than paid staff.
In 2005, the Trustees officially widened the organisation's remit beyond service delivery and the charity started working towards the goal that 'By 2015, Leonard Cheshire will be known globally for changing society's responses to disability'. In 2017 a new strategy 'Supporting journeys toward independence' was launched, with three priorities; Support through community (in the UK and internationally), impact through partnership with organisations of the same values and aims, and influence through insight to influence positive change for people living with disability throughout the world. By 2019 Leonard Cheshire had 6,000 staff and 6,500 volunteers supporting more than 30,000 people.