STUDENT AND TEACHER IN LEEDS
DENISE AND BARBARA AT OXLEY HALL
Barbara made a new lifelong friend at the very beginning of her time in Leeds. In her tribute after Barbara’s death that friend, Denise, described the beginning of their time together:
In October 1964, as a shy 18-year-old, I arrived at Oxley Hall to begin my first year at Leeds University. I was shown into a very small room/large cupboard and introduced to Barbara, the girl I was to share with. Fortunately we got on immediately, with a shared sense of humour, and soon became firm friends. We helped each other to cope with all the new experiences we faced: some daunting, most ‘hilarious’, to use one of Barbara’s favourite word
Barbara is the one with the pearls in the picture, Denise is to her left, Janet Corrie is to the left of Denise and Caroline Molloy-Morley to the right. The inset shows my cousin Pauline. , Her room was just across the corridor from Barbara and Denise so she was one of the second years in the Hall who had to cope with the tendency of these new friends to find everything 'hilarious'.
We have a glimpse into a very early adaptation to independent life by Barbara. The arrival of her grant cheque (£106.13.4 for a term) led to the discovery that her post office account was not acceptable to manage her money. She had to open a bank account so she could buy books and pay for her accommodation. She is very apologetic that she did this without consulting her parents. With no phone in their house, a letter was the quickest way she could contact them.
MOUNTAIN HUT
Denise notes a number of 'firsts' she shared with Barbara including attending their first ball and spending time at the university mountain hut. I missed that first ball in 1966 but there were three others I shared with Barbara.
Leon and Sheila
As St Francis Church had provided an outlet for Barbara in her Primary School years, the University Christian community provided a social outlet for her. Luckily Denise was also a member of the Anglican Church. As Denise notes they each made ‘many lasting friendships’ through the Anglican Society (Ang Soc).
The Anglican student community was strengthened by the presence on campus of the Hostel of the Resurrection which provided accommodation for Anglican men including some training for the priesthood and some from overseas. Barbara quickly befriended Leon Mayers, then recently arrived from Guyana. He stayed in Hotspur Street with her family during the Christmas holiday in 1964. Barbara kept in touch with Leon and his wife Sheila for the rest of her life .
We met regularly before we went to Kenya and once again after our return in the mid-1980s. When Sheila collected her daughter Ellie from nursery school our house was convenient for the two of them to drop by for a cup of tea, a natter and for the children to play. Visits were less frequent when we lived in Manchester, but we did exchange visits to each other's houses over the years.
We slotted back into more frequent contact in the last couple of years of Barbara’s life and they are still supporting me now. The four of us attended the golden wedding celebration of Denise and her husband Jon in the summer of 2024.
The picture includes Denise, Sheila., Jon and Leon.
Allen Knight
Allen Knight was another member of the same Christian group. I think he went to visit Barbara’s family in one vacation, perhaps the Christmas vacation in her second year. Allen was a law student and we as a couple became close to him as he qualified as a solicitor and began his career in Leeds whilst we both continued to live there while we completed our teacher training and began our careers. He and his wife Margaret moved to Cornwall where he led a very successful practice. We regularly exchanged visits, including a trip down there during our leave from Nigeria in 1976. At a distance Allen acted as our solicitor for three house purchases over the years. Sadly he died in a car accident in the early 1990s.
BARBARA AND GEORGE
The student Christian community was open and ecumenical. Through some shared formal events and many more informal meetings and parties people from different denominations met together. As Denise and Babara started their second academic year in Leeds, I began my first year. As I settled in, I became an accepted member of the same social circle and first got to know Barbara through them. I know we were both in a group that met in the house of a television owner (then a rarity amongst undergraduates) for the 31st March 1966 General Election. I know I was attracted to her then: I don’t know whether she noticed me.
In the third term I think we began to gravitate towards one another within the group setting, often walking together between, for example, the Chaplaincy and the Students Union. Towards the end of the term some friends ‘set us up’ as a couple. We had been invited to go just with them to a pub on Boar Lane. When we left they dropped back, leaving the two of us walking back up Park Row towards the University alone. They were delighted to see us start holding hands. After that, I believe we became ‘an item’.
CLARENDON ROAD
As Denise explains, the two friends had left Oxley Hall:
Oxley was very expensive (£51 per term), so at the end of our first year we moved into a flat in an old four-storey building on Clarendon Road. Our two attic rooms would literally sway gently from side to side whenever the wind blew!
The large living room in Clarendon Road was close enough to campus and big enough to host groups of visitors. The ‘hilarity’ had travelled with the two friends from Oxley Hall and Denise, in particular, was an attractive host, making people amused, relaxed and welcome. They stayed together after they graduated, sharing another flat on Grove Lane. In that they began to live more separate lives with separate bed/living rooms and sharing only a kitchen.
More than anywhere else, it was in Clarendon Road that Barbara and I got to know one another better and better. For the rest of 1966 we spent a lot of time together but had some independent social lives. I believe that it was some time in the first half of 1967 that we became committed to a future together. Those were exhilarating days of joy, growth and expectation. In Clarendon Road I proposed and was accepted. In the vacations after that we spread the word within our families and spent time together with them. That summer Barbara was a bridesmaid at my sister Marian’s wedding to Doug Kidd.
Gallery 1967 to 1969
FRIENDS WHO MET US AS A COUPLE
ROBERT BLUCK
New friends made in Barbara’s third year usually knew us as a couple from the start. One of these who has remained in touch was Robert Bluck, now an author of books on Buddhism and a University Chaplain. His memories suggest Barbara was already showing the caring qualities that became so much a feature of her life:
I shall never forget the kindness which you and Barbara showed to a bewildered fellow student in Leeds many years ago.
TERRY AND ALAN
The picture shows Terry and Alan at one of Barbara's parties in Manchester, perhaps her 70th birthday party.
Like Allen and Margaret, Terry and (later) her husband Alan consolidated our early student friendship with lives in Leeds beyond our student days and continued to maintain frequent contacts when both couples moved elsewhere. In our early careers we followed very similar paths, as Terry remembers in her tribute:
Our lives have been knitted together over the years from reading TSEliot aloud in Charles Morris, to your lovely wedding, sharing ambitions and indeed our flat on Burley Wood Mount where we looked after Barbara’s piano, and following you to Africa, then shared visits to Leeds and Prestwich with our growing families. Barbara gallantly took me to A&E when I slipped off a stepping stone in Meanwood Park. What larks!
Terry maintained a high level of creativity and energy into her late 70s. Sadly, She died of cancer in October 2025.
I have a strong memory of a time Barbara and I met Terry in York. We accepted her invitation to come over from Manchester to see her community production of a Christmas mystery play in the centre of the city – itself a reminder of trips to York from Leeds to see mystery plays half a century earlier. The production itself was really good and we met up with Terry and a couple of her other friends for a meal and a chat about the play, Christmas, Christianity and modern life. We parted on the streets of York as she rushed off to catch her last bus home. That is the Terry I will remember: vigorous, creative, thoughtful, still curious and full of vitality.
TEACHER TRAINING, MARRIAGE AND TEACHING
After graduating in Geography on July 12th 1967, Barbara stayed in Leeds for a one year postgraduate Certificate in Education and then taught for two years at Aireborough Grammar School on the Yeadon/Guiseley border. On August 2nd 1969 we married immediately after I had qualified. Of course Carole was the bridesmaid..
Barbara took a full part in the life of the school, particularly its musical life and had strong memories of music teacher Martin Binks – still remembered on the school’s Facebook page Aireborough Grammar School | Martin Binks - we bought him an ice-cream 😆 | Facebook. Barbara joined the Madrigal Choir he established, something she remembered and missed later in life. Wherever we went, she never found an opportunity to join something similar. When we moved to Horsforth in 2022 we quickly discovered his later role as conductor of the Leeds Symphony Orchestra from 1970 till his death in 2019 Martin Binks 1940-2019 | Leeds Symphony Orchestra. Barbara would have loved to have been able to meet up with him but we were too late..
CHOOSING TO GO TO AFRICA:
KATHLEEN CASEY
Barbara was first attracted to Kenya in general and the Rift Valley in particular by one of her Geography teachers at school. Denise remembers that this was reinforced during Barbara’s time in Oxley Hall:
The Warden, Miss Stott, had spent most of her life in education in Kenya, and entertained us with her tales of Africa. Little did we know then that Barbara would, to some extent, follow in her footsteps.
I chose a postgraduate certificate in teaching English as a second language as my teaching qualification on the assumption that I would spend some time working abroad. My interest in Kenya was fired by a meeting with Kathleen Casey, a student from New York on the postgraduate Commonwealth Literature course. She introduced me to African Literature and thus gave me a strong reason to go to Africa and what turned out to be my main purpose for the next decade or more.
Kathleen became a good friend to both of us before we went to Kenya and we kept in touch. She visited us with some relatives or friends whilst we were in Broomfield Terrace in Leeds – I remember their comments on the ‘genuine African artefacts’ brought back from Keya in our small terrace house.
Later when we were working in Nigeria in the mid-1970s she came to work on the same campus. The picture shows her with Rachel and Jenny in our house in Kano, Nigeria, Her daughter Makeba was born while she was there. Though we did not meet up after that, Barbara kept in touch and Makeba told us of her death in 2018.
