Our Founders & History

Group Captain Lord Cheshire of Woodhall
VC OM DSO DFC
1917 – 1992

Geoffrey Leonard Cheshire was born on 7 September 1917. His childhood and youth were lived at the family home of Greywalls near Oxford with his parents Geoffrey and Primrose and his younger brother Christopher. Following in his father’s footsteps to study law at Oxford University, he was commissioned into the reserve of the RAF as a student. So started what was to become a legendary war career.

He served almost without interruption in Bomber Command, flying a record of one hundred bombing missions. He was the most highly decorated bomber pilot of the second world war, and received the accolade of the Victoria Cross. At one stage, he dropped a rank to take command of the famous 617 Squadron, the Dambusters.

Back as a civilian, he set up a community for ex servicemen and women at his home Le Court in Hampshire. The scheme did not prosper but, at the beginning of 1948 and now living alone at Le Court, he agreed to look after one of the community members who was dying of cancer and had nowhere else to go. Cheshire found others coming to him for help, and so started the work which today is carried on in his name with disabled people across the globe.   The organisation which he founded, now called Leonard Cheshire Disability, is the leading independent provider of care for people with physical disabilities in the UK and there are Leonard Cheshire services on all continents.

In the early 1950’s Leonard Cheshire contracted Tuberculosis and was treated in a sanatorium for more than 2 years.  One of his lungs was removed but he made a good recovery and lived a physically active life.  His experience of TB gave him great empathy for fellow sufferers and the Ryder-Cheshire Foundation worked in TB from its early days.

Leonard Cheshire’s award of the Order of Merit was announced on 5 February 1981 and his elevation to the peerage on 15 June 1991.

Leonard Cheshire died from the effects of motor neurone disease on 31 July 1992.

Lady Ryder of Warsaw
1923-2000

Sue Ryder was brought up in Leeds and Suffolk and had an early exposure to humanitarian work through her mother who was involved in welfare work with the poor. She served with the Polish section of the secret Special Operations Executive during World War II where she met people of extraordinary courage and saw the human suffering of war. When peace came, she began relief work for the millions of sick, homeless and destitute across Europe. She went on to work in other parts of the world, confronting poverty and disease. Her charity, now Sue Ryder Care, was established in 1953, with the creation of a Nursing Home in rural Suffolk.

Sue Ryder's strength and determination underpinned nearly five decades of wonderful achievements and helped to transform the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Today Sue Ryder Care has 18 Care Centres and 430 shops in the UK and provides international services stretching from Macedonia to Malawi.

Sue Ryder was honoured by her elevation to the peerage where she took, with special permission, the title Baroness Ryder of Warsaw.

Leonard Cheshire and Sue Ryder met in the mid 1950’s and on 5 April 1959 they married in India and spent what most people would call a honeymoon setting up a home for destitute people with leprosy.  This became the Raphael Centre and was the first project of the Ryder-Cheshire Foundation. It went on to run disability and TB projects in other parts of India, Nepal, and Tanzania.  In the mid 1980’s it set up the Ryder-Cheshire Volunteers scheme in the UK which is now an independent charity.  There are Ryder-Cheshire Foundations in Australia and New Zealand.  Home for them and their two children was in the Suffolk village of Cavendish, though both spent a large part of the year visiting their humanitarian projects worldwide.

We are very grateful for legacies which we have received and which have helped us to launch our programme. Please remember Target TB in your will so that your own contribution to fighting this terrible disease can continue after your death. Click here for more information about leaving a legacy.