Samuel Clegg was the son of Alexander Clegg, who came to Sawley in 1882 to take up the position of master of the Baptist School.
Samuel was only 13 when he started as a pupil-teacher in the Baptist School, before doing another two years at Radford. He went on to acquire a teacher’s certificate at Owens College, Manchester (later Manchester University) followed by two years teaching in Derby, before becoming a teacher in Long Eaton, whilst living with his parents on Back Street.
In 1894 he married Mary Bradshaw of New Sawley. He designed and had built ‘Rye Hill Close’ on Nottingham Road (now 194 Tamworth Road), probably on land owned by his father-in-law, John Bradshaw. The couple moved in there in 1897 and in 1908 he organised a matching house at 196 Tamworth Road, which became the home and surgery of Dr Charles Hugh Latham.
Meanwhile, in 1896 Samuel had been put in charge of Long Eaton Pupil Teachers’ Centre. Under his leadership this gradually expanded.
When the County Council decided to establish a secondary school in Long Eaton, they commissioned Professor Michael Sadler to produce a feasibility study. Sadler was so impressed by the flourishing Pupil Teacher Centre and by Clegg, that he recommended that they be the basis of the new school. The Long Eaton County School and Pupil Teacher Centre opened in 1910, later becoming Long Eaton Grammar School. Clegg served as its headmaster until his death in 1930.
He was also secretary of the committee which established a public library in Long Eaton, a leading member of the local Liberal Association, and of the Long Eaton Co-operative Society, taking classes in ‘The Principles of Co-operation’, and producing the first history of the society in 1901. For a while he was a member of Sawley Parish Council and Trustee of Sawley Charities.
Samuel and Mary’s son became Sir Alec Clegg, one of the country’s most important educationalists, whose son Peter became a leading architect.
Their eldest daughter, Mary Clegg (1896-1961), attended the County School and later married Frederick Attenborough, who had been a teacher at the school and had lodged around the corner in her grandfather’s house in Bradshaw Street. They moved to Cambridge and then London, before settling in Leicester, where Frederick was the principal of the University.
Their children included the late actor and director, Lord Richard Attenborough, and Sir David Attenborough, the TV producer and presenter.
Mary persuaded her son Richard Attenborough to open the Sawley Carnival in 1949 in 1950. He returned in 1958 to open the Memorial Hall.
