What is the Leonard
Cheshire Foundation?
The Leonard Cheshire Foundation is a Trust presiding over
the affairs of 75 Cheshire Homes in the United Kingdom and
affiliated with a further 147 in 45 countries throughout
the world.
How it began
The story of the Cheshire Homes is the story of one man’s
belief in the brotherhood of the human race and his conviction
that ordinary men and women have a duty to help others less
fortunate than themselves.
Group Captain Leonard
Cheshire was 27 when the Second World War ended in 1945.
His name had become known to millions as one of the most
courageous and successful bomber pilots to survive the conflict.
He had received the highest
possible awards for gallantry-the Victoria Cross, the Distinguished
Service Order (and two bars) and the Distinguished Flying
Cross. After the surrender of Germany he was sent to the
Pacific as the official British observer when the atomic
bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.
Leonard Cheshire left
the RAF at the end of the war determined to make the peace
for which he had fought a lasting reality. He had no clear
idea how to set about it but believed that if he could start
by helping people less fortunate than himself then he would
at least be moving in the right direction. The opportunity
came when he was asked to befriend an old man of 75 who
was alone in the world and dying of cancer. He responded
by taking him into his own home and nursing him personally,
until the end. After that, others came to him for help –
not only the terminally ill but the deprived and the disabled.
Although he had no source of income he turned his own home,
Le Court, in Hampshire, into the first Cheshire Home. Despite
the makeshift arrangements and lack of money he found that
dozens of incurably ill people were only too happy to exchange
their clinically surroundings, or in some cases, the loneliness
of their own rooms, for the comradeship they found at Le
Court and sense of belonging.
By 1950, as news of his
work grew and the extent of the needs became apparent in
other parts of the country, local committees of concerned
volunteers sprang up and more Cheshire Homes opened their
doors.
