particularly concerned that she should not know that he was ill and in fact Mrs Lawler died only a few months before Peter, never realising how ill he was.

The people of St Anne's could hardly realise the difficulties under which he was working. He visited the parish, he reconstructed the church and took constant delight in the school. I found it most moving that on two occasion during this time he came to see me to ask to be anointed. He had a faith which was edifying in the true sense of that word.

Then at the end of 1984 he found himself no longer able to continue. He resigned his parish and, after thirty-three years, his Lectureship at Oscott. He went to Aston Hall to be cared for by the Sisters there. While he was at Aston Hall he had a continual stream of visitors, many of whom came to continue seeking his advice and guidance; in a very real way he continued his ministry in his last illness.

The last time I saw him he told me to tell "whoever preaches at my funeral not to go wittering on about how good I've been. I do need the prayers of all my friends" We both knew that the preacher might well be myself.

If I have gone "wittering on" it is because Peter's life has been and continues to be an example for so many of us. It is always difficult, indeed impossible, to tell what part of a priest's ministry is most fruitful. It could have been Peter's years lecturing at Oscott, it may have been his pastoral care in the parishes, it could even have been those months of illness when he was an inspiration to so many.

Peter died peacefully, completely resigned to the will of God, on 15th February, 1985.

The Diocese lost one of the oustanding priests of his generation and many lost a good friend.

P L McCartie

CANON LEONARD A TOMLINSON (1922-29)

Leonard was the younger of two brothers who have given many years of loyal devoted service to the Dioceses of Northampton and East Anglia. Fr Arthur is still happily living in retirement, over 50 years a priest. Leonard was born in Gt Yarmouth, Norfolk, 30 January 1910, and, after primary education at St Mary's Catholic School, Gt Yarmouth, he went on to Cotton in 1922, and then to St Alban's College, Valladolid, in 1929. He returned to

England in 1937 to be ordained on 6 June by the late Bishop Youens in St Mary's Church, Gt Yarmouth, the church in which he had been baptised. His first appointment in 1937 was as assistant to the aging Canon Walmsley Carter at Sheringham who died in November, 1938. Early in 1939 Fr Leonard moved to St Ethelbert's, Slough, and in 1940 to St Thomas's, Woodbridge. In the autumn of that year he went to Bletchley as priest-in-charge , and in 1946 he moved on to Cromer. Fr Leonard had many artistic gifts: painting, making vestments, or sodality banners, with the help of his devoted sister, Florence; photography was another of his many hobbies. But he was essentially a man of restless, impatient energy, and he must have found his time, particularly at Bletchley, very frustrating. He made what he could of the makeshift buildings that served at the time as a chapel and presbytery at Bletchley; but war time building restrictions weighed heavily upon him when he could not get on with the development which was so necessary.

In September, 1949, he changed places with Fr Nutt, and went to Chesham Bois - the right man at exactly the right moment. Metroland had already thrust itself well out beyond Harrow, Moor Park, Rickmansworth to the Amersham area. The extension of the Metropolitan Line to Little Chalfont, Chesham and Amersham was already planned and would be achieved' a few years later. Over the next few years Father Leonard was to see the whole area change from a quiet country area to a busy commuter land. He came in 1949 to a tiny chapel built in 1915 for the few Catholics of the area, but was already feeling the inconveniences of over-crowding. By August, 1953, he had extended it and built the Guild Room for parochial functions and meetings. At Chesham there was a Sunday Mass Centre in the British Legion Hall. After a long and very difficult search he purchased the land and built the Church of St Columba and presbytery there, opened in

1960, and arranged for the area to be divided off into a new parish. But even before he had completed this task, he had turned his attention to the other end of the parish at Little Chalfont. Again a trying search for land, partly because no provision had been made for a Catholic church in the local development plan. In the end, in order to get the land he wanted, he fought his way through a Ministry appeal against the local planning authorities, and gained his point. He planned the new church of St Aidan, saw it well on its way, and then, unselfishly, handed over the task of completing it to Father Hammond, who, when the church was opened in 1965, became the new parish priest there.

Father Leonard had a great gift for leading, and it was this drive and leadership that led the people of the whole area to raise a great deal of money through a multitude of efforts. Father Leonard accumulated this money carefully, and spent it carefully. He, having paid for the extension of the Chesham Bois church, shouldered the burden of the sums needed to start both Chesham and Little Chalfont, and, when these places were divided off, his financial settlement in their favour was outstandingly generous.

His Canonry in 1969 was a well-deserved recognition of and reward for twenty years of unceasing effort. But age and ill-health were beginning to take their toll, and he took his retirement in 1975 with quiet relief, to live at Chalfont St Peter, within easy reach of the many friends he had made over the past twenty-six years. In 1976 he was more than happy to resign his membership of the Chapter, but was made an Honorary Canon. A few quiet years pottering about his cottage, doing a little decorating, etc. brought great contentment, heightened whenever he was invited back to see and enjoy the developing fruits of his earlier labours. After a spell in hospital he came home to die there on 21 January, 1983. Euge serve bone.

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