Lord Egerton of Tatton.

Lord Maurice Egerton of Tatton was the fourth Baron Egerton of Tatton in Cheshire. He was born in 1874 and died childless on 30 January 1958 marking the end of the Egerton line. The Egerton family had been at Tatton Park since the 16th Century and it seems sad that great heritage should literally die out. Here below is the beautiful Tatton Park House which was gifted to the National Trust on his death.




I have been slowly trying to make a picture of this man in my mind, he was said to have been "an innovator and a man of great inventive and technical skill, a pioneer aviator, photographer and filmmaker, he was an early motorist and prodigious traveller," but for all that he presents a lonely figure, dying far away from Cheshire at his castle estate in Kenya. Bitterly spurned by an un named woman who he pursued twice, even building the strange and wonderful Egerton Castle for her because she had rejected his first prospective marital home.


I can do no better than quote from this article by journalist Benson Riungu, written in June 2004 for the East African Standard, Nairobi.

"Determining to impress her, Lord Egerton set about building a ‘house’ on a scale that would surely impress her and make her change her mind. He conceived of a castle that would have no comparison in England or any other country for that matter.
Dressed stones and zinc tiles for the roof were shipped from Europe, the builders from Europe and Asia. The result, in 1938, was a stupendous four-storey edifice fitted with some of the most up-to-date mechanical and electrical gadgets at the time, including an escalator.
Upon completion, the peer threw what was billed as the biggest party ever seen in pre-colonial Kenya, with guests coming from as far as Northern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe and Nyasaland, now Malawi.
The cheers and congratulations, it was to turn out, had come too soon. When the woman for whom the castle had been built came back to Kenya and viewed it, she dismissed it as "a museum" and a monument to vanity.
Being spurned appears to have changed Lord Egerton in a fundamental way. Thereafter he seemed to live in a fantasy world.
He furnished and ran the castle as if the family he had envisaged actually existed. Nobody but the house servants was ever allowed in.
But an even more far-reaching chance was in his attitude towards women. He developed such a passionate hatred for them that he banned them from his castle and put up notices warning female trespassers that they risked being shot on sight.
Visitors, including friends, were to leave their wives and daughters eight miles away from the castle. And when he planned to visit the quarters where his African staff lived, he would issue a two-week notice so that all women could be vacated."

The article explores some of the goings on of the Happy Valley set and is a very interesting read go here to read the article " The Houses That Love Built"

However he is remembered for founding the excellent Egerton University at Njoro, there is a page on their site detailing his contribution here and his gift of Tatton Park to the National Trust. The above image of Lord Egerton is from their website here

Letter Two: N'gata Farm Njoro 16/5/26

The reason for the delay in getting this post on the net is that I have been trying to research, read and understand more about the Africa my Grandfather was experiencing. I had not realised that the time he was there coincided with the infamous era of the "Happy Valley" crowd.

My next post will be some back ground information about both the dissolute Happy Valley settlers and Lord Egerton himself who was one of the few to make a success of farming in Africa. In 1939, Lord Egerton donated 400 hectares of land for a school to provide training for Europeans and Africans in agriculture and an additional 1, 215 hectares along with his strange Castle home on his death in 1958. There is now at Njoro the important and succesful Egerton University which grew from educational foundations that Lord Egerton laid and he is kindly thought of. It is said of him that he “did more for Kenya than any other white person”.
I find myself glad that my grandfather was working for him rather than one of the less palatable friends of Lord Delamere.

Letter Two
We skip forward to after Easter in 1926 and I have included page one of this actual letter as it was written on lovley old Fowler letterheaded paper complete with an impressive 23 branches listed, including Alexandria, Honolulu and Havana.
Allan is now at Lord Egerton's Estate up in Njoro.
Naughty Patrick, the dog, is again referred to and the nature notes are touching.


















N´Gata Farm
Njoro
Kenya Colony
BEA
16/5/26

My Dearest Daughter Joyce,

Thank you so much for your long and clever letter you sent with Mummys. I am glad you had such a happy Easter and got lots of eggs.
We must go to Middleton Pond when I come home and see if we cannot catch some of those tiddlers for tea and if we don’t I shall have to buy a big crab on the way home to make up for our loss.
Patrick was naughty to fight Paddy James but perhaps he had to do it in self defence; sometimes the most gentle and peaceful of us have to fight because we are attacked by cruel enemies. Anyhow if Patrick has a fresh hole bitten in his ear he will be able to hear a lot better now and he will look more handsome with the lump on his head bitten off.
I hope you and Mummy will go away for some holiday soon because it will not be long before I am coming sailing back to you and leaving the little black children for other lands where people have olive coloured skins, the Italians and the Spaniards and then at last come to old England where folks skins are white;(at least they are when they wash them properly).

We saw such a large herd of Gazelle, a kind of Deer close to us this week and we often see Ostriches and sometimes Snakes but only little ones. One day I found two tiny little Hares that had been abandoned by their mother; such dear fluffy little things. I brought then home in my pocket and fed them with milk from a spoon and they drank it greedily, they lived for three days and then I am sorry to say they died, they were too young to be left without their Mother.
I hope you are getting on nicely at school, some day perhaps when you are a big girl you may go on a long voyage on the sea. I hope so for it is grand and I am sure you will like it.

Much Love and Many Kisses from Father


On the back of this photo is written;
"My Dog- Mutt and Kipsoi my Cook outside my Hut. "

This I am sure is Kipsoi's mother as we have another photograph of this lady labelled " My cooks mother"

Along the Suez Canal, through the Red Sea and so to Africa

A month long journey from Southampton calling at Lisbon, Gibraltar, Malaga, Marseilles, Genoa, Port Said, Port Sudan, Aden and eventually Mombasa. I know we have more postcards of some of the ports which I will be able to post later but there are only these two at present. He will be here in Kenya on this first trip until 22 Feb 1927 when he returns to the UK, again on the SS Wangoni.

The Military Hospital Gibraltar









The Wangoni arrived at Port Said on 7th November 1925 by this time a very busy international port which developed since the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. I quote Blake Burleson's book (and see previous post) to give an idea of what it must have been like.
"Within walking distance of the ships one could find a post office, tea houses, cafes, a railway station, sporting clubs, department stores of various kinds, mosques with tall minarets, churches and synagogues. Walking along the Rue du Commerce was like walking on the midway at a circus ; shopkeepers, sidewalk vendors, jugglers, fortune tellers and magicians courted the tourists."
Another fascinating detail from his book is that Port Said was one of the first places in the world to use gaslight in the streets to increase the visibility for ships.

Port Said: The Customs Quay










On from here they went through the Suez Canal south to the stifling heat of the Red Sea. My grandfather talks in future letters of the terrible heat, it being too hot to, either sleep at night or, hold the deck parties and dances they had enjoyed in the Mediterranean. On a future journey in 1927 they had dogs on board . He writes "the butcher comes every now and then and sluices cold water over them" . Blake Burleson writes that mattresses would be taken on deck at night to take advantage of whatever cooling breeze they could find.

Arriving finally at Mombasa on 12 November 1927 they dock at the Port of Kilindini and then I think he would continue his journey by rail on the Uganada Railway to the station of Menengai just north of Nakuru.
This is a copy of his photograph. From here perhaps by car to Lord Egerton's Estate at N'gata.

The Station: Menengai

About this blog...

I am in the process of preparing a blog of letters and photographs from Kenya and India in the 1920´s and early 1930´s. My grandparents, Allan and Annie Thackeray sent them back to their daughter Joyce who was living in Scotland while her parents were travelling. My grandfather was an engineer for John Fowler of Leeds and was working with the steam ploughs in both Africa and India. The letters are to a young girl, my mother was 8 at the start of the letters, so are not so much about the trials and tribulations of the work but more about general life and of course fond questions about her well being etc but there are some fascinating glimpses of the countries and people.


The first post will be about the journey from Southampton to Mombasa on the SS Wangoni which set sail 26th October 1925 incidentally with Carl Jung on board too.
Should anyone stumble across this first page and have any interesting information re the John Fowler Co, the Thackeray family or agriculture in Kenya and India in the 1920's and 1930's please don't hesitate to contact me. I have many missing gaps. I never knew my grandfather, was too young to ask my grandmother much before she died and my mother died 3 years ago...I don't even know if we have any relations alive on the Thackeray side.
My email is val.littlewood@gmail.com
I would love to hear from you.