After completing his apprenticeship he was sent as a student to Owen’s College in Manchester under Professor Sir Henry Roscoe F.R.S.  On completion of his studies he returned to his father’s works and donned the overalls ending as foreman of the finishers and pattern-makers departments.  Eventually he was placed in sole charge of Thomas Ryder’s works. In the meantime his father had bought the important works of Allen, Harrison & Co.
 
About this time Lecomber developed a new Metallic Alloy of great value in anti-friction bearings.  He called this alloy Cantaba.  Allen Harrison’s old works were known as “Cambridge Works” and the Latin form  of Cambridge (Cantabrigia) no doubt suggested the title under which the new alloy was registered.
 
When his father retired in 1908 Lecomber became the sole owner of three big works – the two above companies plus John Mellor & Co. -  hence his wealth.  In Manchester he had become a city councillor  but he was proudest of his association with Henshaw’s Institution for the blind.  He became while in Ruthin the Chairman of its Board of Management from 1917/18 to 1922/23.  He was also founder and past president of the Allied Brewery Traders’ Association.

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Established in Ruthin

 

His association with Ruthin came about during his courtship of Margaret Speakman Pendlebury who lived at Cefn Coch, and had come to live there when she was two years of age.  After their marriage they lived in Cheshire and at Ty Coed in Pwllglas (now called Maes Tegfryn) before moving to Dedwyddfa at the bottom of Jumbo Hill (Bryn Goodman) and across the road from  ‘Coetmor’ , the house designed by the well known Cheshire architect John Douglas– and who was also the architect of the Peers Memorial clock on the town square.
 
While in Ruthin, and being  ‘rich’ he virtually bought up the whole area, including land, farms, residential and business premises. A great deal of it came from the Ruthin Castle sales of 1913 and 1919. He was a very generous man, for example, he gave 3 acres of land for allotments, a plot for 10 houses in Llanfair Road (houses to be built under the Act for the ”Housing of Working Classes”), and playing fields.  Castle Farm, which he renamed as the Dedwyddfa Dairy Farm, became his Home Farm.
 
On the land he owned nearer Llanfair he built a new farmhouse – Cantaba. This property always intrigued the writer, who in his boyhood days used to cycle past on his way to the Ruthin County School as it was then known.  All the other farms that he knew about were ancient and stone built, and here was a modern brick built one.  We now know that it derived its name from the ‘cantaba’ alloy of which he was extremely proud.

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The Mayor

 

The Minutes of Ruthin Borough Council on 1st October 1917 showed that a vacancy had occurred due to the death of a Councillor Price Morris and at that meeting it was formally proposed that William Godfrey Lecomber Esq. of Dedwyddfa, Ruthin be elected a Councillor to fill the vacancy.  All this had of course already been decided at a Committee meeting of the Council – full meetings on the whole simply ratified Committee decisions.
 
At the next full Council meeting held just one month later he was sworn in as a Councillor and it was immediately unanimously resolved that he be elected Mayor for the ensuing year.  In the glowing speeches that followed one of the things that he said was that he hoped that he had not been elected for his money and if he thought that this had been so he would not have taken up the position!!  (He and we I think know better!!)
 
He was a wartime Mayor – three of his sons were serving soldiers,  Lieut. Philip Hebdon Lecomber , one of twins, was killed in action in his 22nd year on March 27th 1918; while his eldest son, Capt. Eric Lecomber, although surviving the war, died in July 1928 , aged 33 from injuries he had sustained during the conflict.  The twin son was George.  He also had two daughters, Frieda and Edna.
 
When Peace was announced an ox roast celebration was held on Ruthin town Square, arranged for August 1919, with sit down meals for all the old people, sports for the children on Cae Gwynach and an evening film show at the Town Hall; bonfires, fireworks, etc.; all paid for by Lecomber. Not for nothing was he known as the ‘Peace Mayor’ – holding office for six strenuous years 1917-23., creating a precedent as far as Ruthin was concerned.
 
In October 1919 ‘it gave him much pleasure to add to the Mayoral  Chain a medallion as a memento of the Declaration of Peace on the conclusion of the European War which had occurred during his term of office’.  In 1920 he was elected as an Alderman – just three years after joining the Council and becoming Mayor.
 
At a special meeting in July 1921 he was made a Freeman of the Borough at the same time as Ezra Roberts, who had been in public office for a period of FIFTY years.  He commissioned Julius Hare, one of the oldest members of the Royal Academy, to do a portrait of him (and also of his wife).  The portrait shows the medallion which he had previously added, together with the Freedom scroll.
 
One of his last appearances in an official capacity as Mayor was the visit of the Prince of Wales in 1923.  The photograph shows him inspecting the ranks of ex-servicemen. He is standing in front of Private Thomas Jones who is refusing to take his hand as a protest against the way the ex-servicemen had been treated after the war
 

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