Lives in Cricket No 48 - Maurice Leyland

158 Against the odds about something, looking really stern, but then you’d spot that look in his eye and you realised he was having a joke with you. About ten days after that last visit Maurice, much weakened, no longer able to eat or drink, slipped into a coma and, on New Year’s Day, he passed away quietly in his sleep. * The funeral service was held on Wednesday, January 5, 1967 at the Trinity Methodist Church on the corner of College Road, and Maurice was then taken to Stonefall Cemetery where he was cremated. There were representatives there from all walks of life. The Miles’, Maurice and Connie’s oldest friends, were among the family mourners, the North Riding Schools, North Riding Education Committee, Harlow Hill Methodist Men’s Fellowship, the Royal Pioneer Corps Association, Northern Cricket Society, Harrogate Council, the Central Council of Physical Recreation, the Londesboro Club, Yorkshire Cricket Federation, several local cricket clubs and leagues, football leagues, Leeds United AFC, Harrogate Golf Club, Harrogate Bowls Club, Wombwell Cricket Lovers Society (also representing the Kilner family); former colleagues such as Herbert Sutcliffe, Arthur Wood, Arthur Mitchell, Len Hutton, Brian Sellers, Bill Bowes, Percy Holmes, Frank Smailes and Norman Yardley; among the current players were Ken Taylor, Doug Padgett and Fred Trueman; several Yorkshire CCC committee men; and representatives too from Lancashire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. The family party, however, was a small one. His sister-in-law Emma was there with her son Geoff and her niece Jennifer and Gordon’s wife Peggy was there too but two cousins on his dad’s side, his father’s brother Edgar, all with their respective spouses, were the only blood relatives. Early death and the Second World War had already accounted for so many of the family on his mother’s side. Next page: Trinity Methodist Church, Harrogate, 2016