The Bellingham Family

On Friday 6 June, exactly 117 years after Old Truronian Leonard Bellingham (TS 1908-10) joined the School, the more recent Bellingham family visited to see where their grandfather and great-grandfather had spent some of his childhood.

Leonard Bellingham, the son of a builder from Newquay, boarded at Truro School from 1908 to 1910. Before Truro he went to Newquay Elementary School. After leaving school he became an apprentice builder.

He was uncle to L.J.C. Bellingham who attended the school from 1925 to 1927 and A.G. Bellingham who attended from 1934 to 1939, and his own sons, Allen and John, went to the school in the 1930s and 1940s.

The Memorial Booklet reported that Leonard Bellingham ‘Major, Wiltshire Regiment, served throughout World War I, 1914-18, in the DCLI. He volunteered for service in 1940 in the Wiltshire Regiment and proceeded to India in 1941 where he was stationed at a P.O.W. camp in Dehra Dun until 1943 when he took over the command of a rest camp at Maungdan, Burma. He died of wounds received in an air raid in March, 1943.’ 

The 1939-45 memorial in the School Chapel to the Old Truronians who gave their lives in the war includes L. Bellingham.

Between the wars, the School Archive tells us that Leonard was an active member of what was then the Truro School Association. The school magazines recorded that when the Truro School Lodge was set up in 1936 Leonard held the position of Almoner. In 1936-37 Leonard was Treasurer of the Truro College Old Boys’ Association. In 1937 he was also elected Vice-Chairman, and became Chairman in 1938.

It was lovely to welcome back the descendants of Leonard, his nephews and sons.