No ordinary English Farm Labourer

Strange as it may seem, the founder of modern Kenya 'Jomo Kenyatta' (Johnstone Kamau) had a direct and gentle exposure to English rural life.

Not with Cheshire and the Cholmondeleys though - in this case it was with the villagers of Storrington and Thakeham in West Sussex.

Which all goes to show that there are connections everywhere if you look for them and that, as Jomo said himself, 'it is all about personal relations and that these cannot be left largely to take care of themselves'.

From: Times Past - Storrington & District Museum: ‘Preserving Yesterday for Tomorrow [Newsletter No 4 April 2000]

JOMO KENYATTA - FAMOUS WARTIME RESIDENT

by Malcolm Linfield

"Jomo Kenyatta first came to England in 1929 as official spokesman for his people, the Kikuyu, to try and redress their grievances against the colonial government in Kenya.

He stayed in England for the next 17 years, during which time he studied anthropology at the University of London and wrote his acclaimed book 'Facing Mount Kenya', published in 1938.

Kenyatta found odd jobs to finance his mission and lived as cheaply as he could. He bombarded the Colonial Office with petitions, all of which were ignored, but his book was a bestseller, and helped to establish him as something of a celebrity who people wanted to meet and talk to.

The book was more than a history of his people's culture – it was also full of propaganda and attacked the whole colonial system.

Kenyatta was now ready to return to Kenya, having, at least, done much to publicise the grievances of his people to the outside world.

Unfortunately, the outbreak of the Second World War put paid to his plans, and he was unable to return home. He was persuaded to leave London and stay with friends in Sussex, arriving at the home of Roy Armstrong, a Southampton University lecturer, who lived in the beautiful Sandgate area two miles to the east of Storrington.

The peaceful countryside was, in many ways, a home from home to Kenyatta, with its view of the rolling South Downs, its bracken and silver birches, its woods and farmland.

He certainly felt comfortable here, and stayed throughout the duration of the war, renting the flat in Roy Armstrong's house. He was given his own area of scrub to clear where he successfully cultivated his own supply of vegetables and kept some chickens.

One of the silver birches became his "sacred tree", through which he communicated with the spirits of his people during his more reflective moments.

Soon after moving to Sussex, Kenyatta took a job as a nursery worker at A G Linfield's nurseries in the neighbouring parish of Thakeham. He was initially put to work in the tomato hothouses, although the shortage of manpower throughout the war meant he would have done many different jobs during the four or five years he was employed at the family firm.

The strive to produce as much home grown food as possible meant that companies like Linfields had to devote all their energies to the production of vegetables - however, very few mushrooms were grown as they were considered "devoid of food value".

Kenyatta apparently got on well with everybody, and proved to be a helpful and considerate colleague, willing to come to the aid of anyone who needed a helping hand.

During histime in Sussex, he became friendly with a family in Ashington and it was through them that he met Edna Clarke, a teacher. When her parents were killed in an air raid in May, 1941, Kenyatta instinctively offered his help and sympathy and within a year they were married. On 11th August, 1943, their son Peter Magana was born in Worthing Hospital.

Kenyatta was something of a novelty in the Storrington area. Affectionately known as Jumbo', he soon settled into Sussex life and was well known in the village. But he was definitely an extraordinary character - flamboyant and gregarious, a showman who delighted in mimicry and whose powers of imagination would hold an audience spellbound as he pretended to stalk and kill a lion.

No doubt these exceptional talents helped him to persevere through the long years of frustration and disappointment, but he never gave up, and despite numerous setbacks, somehow or other, he always managed to keep his dream alive.

No doubt, the peaceful Sussex countryside and its close resemblance to his homeland must have been a comfort as well as a reminder of his single-minded purpose. He managed to keep cheerful throughout his wartime exile, a man convinced of his destiny and confident that one day the aspirations of his people would be realized.

It would only be a matter of time.

To supplement his farmworker's wage of £4 per week, he was in much demand as a lecturer. Not only did he lecture to British troops under the Forces Educational Scheme, but he also lectured for the Workers Educational Association (WEA), usually about colonial issues.

In September 1946, Kenyatta sailed from Southampton, leaving behind Edna and their child at Thakeham. Once home, as the unquestioned leader of the new nationalism, he soon became fully immersed in Kenyan politics.

His primary objective was to show the colonial authorities the dangerous consequences of ignoring the new nationalist movement.

However, this is not to deny that he was probably prepared to tolerate a certain amount of violence, should the government not come to its senses and fail to grant concessions to the nationalists.

Kenyatta's alleged involvement with the "Mau Mau" rebellion during the 1950s has effectively tainted his reputation ever since.

It was his failure to gain any concessions after World War II which enabled the militants to come to power, and the result was the tragedy of the "Mau Mau" rebellion: with the enormous loss of 13,547 lives (of whom 13,423 were Kikuyu alone).

Kenyatta's responsibility for "Mau Mau" has been the subject of a great deal of debate, but he openly condemned it on a number of occasions because it threatened to destroy the tribal unity he had been carefully nurturing.

Unfortunately; he lost the initiative to the militants who exploited his position as the father of the nationalist movement by elevating him to the position of "leader" of "Mau Mau", whether he liked it or not - even after his detention by the colonial authorities.

The tragedy of "Mau Mau" is that it need never have happened - an enlightened government would have seen the folly of continuing to suppress all African aspirations.

By 1956 the rebellion was over; more than 11,000 Kikuyu had been killed by the security forces. But all had not been in vain; the revolt ensured that change was inevitable and in 1961 Kenyatta and the other detainees were released.

During negotiations with the British Government in London in October, 1963, Kenyatta took the opportunity to revisit old friends in West Sussex. He visited Roy Armstrong at his wartime home at Highover, Bracken Lane, complete with limousine, cabinet and bodyguards!

Politics was apparently not one of the subjects they covered. Arthur Johnson of West Chiltington, who knew Kenyatta very well during the war years, stated that he "could never believe that he was responsible for those atrocities in Kenya."

Arthur’s wife said: 'We remember him as he was here. We thought he was a very friendly and very nice, charming man who was very fond of children and of animals."

Mrs FW Eddolls, in charge of the Linfields' canteen during the war, also said how she found him to be "a very nice and likeable chap" and how she would be very pleased to see him again.

In 1964 Kenya became a republic within the British Commonwealth with Kenyatta its first president. He had come a long way from his days as the friendly, helpful nursery worker at Linfields' nursery!

His first act was to welcome the frightened whites to stay in the country.

Even though he had been kept in detention by the colonial government for nine years, he was able to forget his own suffering and offer the hand of reconciliation. He also knew the importance of maintaining stability in Kenya if foreign capital was still to be invested in the new state.

Despite the years of violence of "Mau Mau", Kenya soon became a model of harmony and stability. Foreign investment boomed and the economy flourished".

SOME KENYATTA QUOTES

"I like the English - in England. Africa is for the Africans."

"When the Missionaries arrived, the Africans had the Land and the Missionaries had the Bible. They taught how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible."

"It Africans were left in peace on their own lands, Europeans would have to offer them the benefits of white civilization in real earnest before they could obtain the African labour which they want so much. They would have to offer the African a way of life which was really superior to the one his father lived before, and a share in the prosperity given them by their command of science. They would have to let the African choose what parts of European culture could be beneficially transplanted, and how they could be adapted ... The African is conditioned, by cultural and social institutions of centuries, to a freedom of which Europe has little conception, and it is not in his nature to accept serfdom forever."

"To all the dispossessed youth of Africa: (we strive) for perpetuation of communion with ancestral spirits through the fight for African freedom, and in the firm faith that the dead, the living, and the unborn will unite to rebuild the destroyed shrines."

"Europeans assume that, given the right knowledge and ideas, personal relations can be left largely to take care of themselves, and this is perhaps the most fundamental difference in outlook between Africans and Europeans."

"The European condemns the Africans for having two wives yet he keeps two mistresses".

"Many people may think that, now there is Uhuru, now I can see the sun of Freedom shinning, richness will pour down like manna from Heaven. I tell you there will be nothing from Heaven. We must all work hard, with our hands, to save ourselves from poverty, ignorance, and disease."

"I have no intention of retaliating or looking backwards. We are going to forget the past and look forward to the future."

"Don't be fooled into turning to Communism looking for food."

"God said this is our land, land in which we flourish as people... we want our cattle to get fat on our land so that our children grow up in prosperity; and we do not want the fat removed to feed others."

The Anthropology of the Indigenous English

MY BACKGROUND IN PERSPECTIVE

Pressed by Australians and New Zealanders to define my background I have been known to categorize myself as an Aboriginal or Indigenous Englishman. In the best of all possible worlds I have advised, the area that I come from should be designated as an Indigenous Reserve under the auspices of UNESCO.

Of course, Antipodeans have a very hazy view of the English class system which owes a lot to the dialogue between Jeeves and Bertie Wooster. They also have an equally hazy view of rural village life in England based on Midsomer Murders – gracious me that can’t be right, can it?

I was heartened then by an article in The Times of July 5, 2003, which puts these kinds of notions in their proper place. I have provided it below.

THE CHOLMONDELEY PEOPLE (by Carol Midgely)

In the shelter of a Gothic castle, a near-feudal world of order and duty survives. But can it keep the 21st century at bay? Here, a great estate opens its heart to Carol Midgley

‘YOU can’t miss Laundry Cottage. It’s the one with the huge Union Jack flapping outside. In a cynical age, the red, white and blue in Cliff Horne’s garden might invite ridicule, the suspicion that whoever ran up the colours was an exhibitionist.

But outside this unassuming house set in the grounds of Cholmondeley Castle, it seems entirely appropriate — the unaffected gesture of an old-fashioned patriot.

Horne is what used to be called a retainer, someone who has devoted his working life to the needs of one family. Now retired, for 42 years he was chef to the Cholmondeleys. Before him, his father was the Cholmondeley chauffeur; his mother worked in another of the family’s great houses.

Today the Cholmondeley estate (it’s pronounced “Chumley”) is probably one of the last examples of a near-feudal way of life that most of us thought had vanished generations ago. The 450 people who live within its 7,500 acres know their proper station, and if they question it, they do so very quietly. They talk always of “her ladyship” (Lady Cholmondeley) and though they no longer doff their caps or curtsy, perhaps no one would look twice if they did.

I am there on a summer morning to discover how such an apparent anachronism survives at the start of the 21st century, to meet “her ladyship” and the people of her enclosed and ordered world.

The approach to the castle is impossibly romantic. Emerald acres strewn with orchids, daisies, buttercups. Lakes where gigantic carp roll and swirl. Gardens of magnolia, camellia, azalea and rhododendron. Cedars of Lebanon and spreading oaks among sweet chestnut, lime, beech and plane. And the castle itself — a mock Gothic pile of battlements and crenellations, sitting on top of its hill at the heart of it all.

I wrench myself from fantasies of Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel, and ring the bell on a mighty oak door. There is the tap tap of footsteps inside and I am greeted by a cheerful, businesslike woman in blouse, skirt and court shoes. This is Penny, Lady C’s assistant.

“Did you find it all right?” she asks, “It can be a bit confusing. Come in and don’t worry about the dogs.” Inside, the castle is grand and simultaneously homely — a trick pulled off with the help of Iris, a beagle-basset puppy lolloping around the hall.

In the study another dog — a lurcher named Daisy — is curled in a basket. On the wall are dozens of framed hunting scenes (Lady Cholmondeley is passionate for the chase). And there, wearing beige slacks with her leg up and resting after a recent injury, is my hostess herself.

“I’ve had a bit of a knock,” she smiles, shaking my hand. An attempt at small talk runs into immediate difficulties. She asks me where I come from and when I say Lancashire, she asks, perfectly genuinely: “Oh, do you know the Seftons?” I can’t quite bring myself to say that the nearest I’ve got to that great northern dynasty is sinking a half of lager in Liverpool’s Sefton Arms.

Lavinia Cholmondeley’s husband, George Hugh, died here in 1990 aged 70 but his people still speak lovingly of him as if he were a much-missed father. The couple’s son, David, the present Marquess, who inherited the title and the office of Lord Great Chamberlain, lives at the other family seat, Houghton Hall in Norfolk. A regular face in Tatler magazine, he is, at 43, one of the country’s most eligible bachelors.

Last year, he conducted a census of all the properties and tenants on the two estates — something last done 200 years ago by the first marquess. All were photographed individually by Garlinda Birkbeck and the results bound in three gigantic leather volumes. It is a remarkable record of a community and a way of life on the brink of the 21st century.

I have come here to interview some of these people, to discover what ordinary folk think about living with one pub, one shop, and one landlady. It is an almost inconceivable lifestyle for a visiting thirty something with a non-feudal mortgage on a London flat. Half the staff here were born on the estate and those who have lived here ten years or more are still newcomers. One farmer, asked to sum up life on the estate, thought for a moment and replied: “It’s probably the worst place in England to have an affair and get away with it.”

There is a clue to Johnnie O’Shea’s trade in the stuffed fox’s head fixed above the front door of his cottage. O’Shea, 66, was huntsman with the Cheshire, looking after the hounds. He is an enthusiastic defender of estate life. We sit with his wife, Ann, in front of a roaring fire. I am drinking tea laced liberally with whisky; Johnnie drinks his whisky straight.

“Lady Cholmondeley is a grand woman. Nobody has a bad word for her,” he says in Irish brogue. “She’s no airs and graces, you know; she’d talk to anybody the same if they were a roadsweeper or a lord. We all look out for one another here.”

“My day started at 8am to get breakfast ready and then lunch. I’d go back at 6pm to cook dinner and stay until I was no longer needed. If they were having a dinner party, it could be quite late. My claim to fame was cooking dinner for 45 people in 1986. Thirteen of those were royals. The only one missing was Diana, Princess of Wales.

“I’ve been to the State Opening of Parliament three times. His lordship (as the Lord Great Chamberlain) had to walk backwards in front of the Queen. He invited the staff to come down and watch and put us up in a hotel.

“I was here when David was born. He’s a lovely young man. I’ve had three hip operations and it was David who paid for my second. When my eldest son, Terry, got married last year he sent him a couple of cases of red wine.

“I’ve never thought of leaving the estate. We were never paid huge wages but we had free accommodation and always felt looked after. We still do. They say that people leave here only when they die. Everyone has their place, and it works.”

THE HEAD GARDENER

[Bill Brayford, 44, single].

“I was 21 when I started working in the castle grounds. I got the job through the then head gardener. There are a few gardens to look after but I think my favourite is the Temple Garden. It’s so lovely and peaceful. All the visitors seem to like it. I can’t ever have seen myself working in an office; it’s not me.

I like the gardens in all the seasons and there is always plenty to do. Lady Cholmondeley is very good with plants; she really knows her stuff. I work five days a week, 8am to 5pm, but I have never lived on the estate. I have a former council house that I’ve bought. Sometimes it’s nice to go home and get away from work for a bit.”

THE VILLAGE PUB

The Cholmondeley Arms [Clarissa Dickson Wright has stayed overnight en route to Scotland].

“This is the quintessential English pub. It serves some of the best beef in the country, and it’s all locally reared. Last night I had asparagus that came from ten miles down the road.”

The old building was formerly the primary school but was turned into a pub in the 1980s. The third marquess was a teetotal Quaker and closed all the alehouses on the estate. It was Lady Cholmondeley’s idea to open the pub to give the estate a social focal point. Johnnie O’Shea does the mowing.

Some locals whisper to me that they don’t drink here because it’s too expensive. They are more likely to go to the working men’s club, which is owned by the estate. People come primarily for the food, which appears in the Egon Ronay Good Food Guide

JEAN OAKLEY [75 years old, Shingle Cottage - born on the estate].

“I’ve never wanted to leave. My great-grandfather lived on one of the farms. My husband and I were at Fields Farm for 31 years and had three daughters. After he died in 1986 I moved to another house and then to this cottage.

“The estate is my social life. I help with the church and the gift shop at the castle. I feel privileged to have lived here so long. This is my world. There is still the feeling of friendship here. It’s also different for the younger generation. They have careers and they go to university, which we never did.

They want to go out into the wider world. But I think it’s a wonderful life. We all have a pass to the grounds, which are absolutely beautiful. My granddaughter calls it Grandma’s garden. Lady Cholmondeley is wonderful. She does meals on wheels for the elderly, taking her turn like everybody else.”

THE STEEPLE-CHASE HORSE TRAINER

[Ginger McCain and wife Beryl of Bankhouse Farm. First-class stables converted from a former dairy farm on the estate].

McCain used to train racehorses on Southport beach until the council stopped him, complaining that he was disturbing the natural habitat. He needed to find somewhere secluded, with lots of space, and found a position tucked unseen into Cholmondeley’s rolling hills.

This is where Red Rum, the horse which made him world famous, ended his days. Fans worldwide still send flowers and Polo mints here every year on Rummy’s birthday and on Grand National day. McCain never imagined he would end up a tenant on a private estate, but he has no regrets. “We came here 12 years ago after spending years looking for a suitable place to buy It’s a good life. If you are not careful, you forget there is a world out there.”

NEIL WILLIS - FARMER

[Neil Willis and wife, Felicity at Willey Farm, stocked with 220 dairy cows and five horses. Sons, John, 19, studying biology, and James, 21, studying land management; he may join his father on the farm].

“Our family has been here since 1898 and I’ve never lived anywhere else. It’s a good life ... we can’t complain. We all feel we have something in common on the estate — like we all have a stake in it. I read in the papers that there’s no community spirit within areas of cities but that’s not something we ever have to think about. The estate is part of the glue that holds things together.

“There’s an old-fashioned respect for her ladyship and the family. It has been earned. When times are tough they are very good to people. After one foot-and-mouth outbreak they waived the rent for six months.

“It would be nice to own your own farm but it doesn’t feel like you’re living in a rented house somehow, especially if you can hand it down to your son.”

JOHN BARNETT - FARMER

[John Barnett, 57, and wife, Olwen at Bickley Hall Farm – a dairy, sheep, arable farm. Son, Gareth, 21, studying maths at Warwick University].

“My family has farmed here for years. My grandfather, Robert, started in 1913 when the rent was £184 for six months. I still have his rent book. My father William took over from him in 1945 and he handed over to me in 1982. As a boy I went to Cholmondeley primary school, which is now a pub. I’d ride there on my bike and if I wanted I could stop at every house along the way because I knew everyone. I don’t know as many now. Once you lose a school you lose a lot of contact.

“Gareth is not interested in farming. Kids are realising there is another life out there and you can’t blame them.

“I hope it stays a close-knit community but things change. The pace of life seems to be getting faster. Everybody seems to be short of time these days.”

ROBIN LATHAM - FARMER

[Robin Latham, 66, Brook House Farm. Semi-retired. Has lived on the estate all his life. Son, Phil, 33, runs most of the farm. Ten years ago Robin organised the building of a bowling green].

“I’m very proud of that green. It’s a nice hobby and it’s good for local people to have a meeting place. We have a little bar in the clubhouse. I put £10,000 of my own money into building it, but it’s paid me back. It was a joint effort all this; we pooled local resources and skills.

Clarissa Dickson Wright wrote her name on the clubhouse wall but a few of the regulars weren’t very impressed that she’d scribbled on the clean paint! “We have a tennis court next to it now which David (Lord Cholmondeley) came and opened for us. I have to say they are excellent landlords. I have no complaints. There are plans to open a new village hall on spare land next to the green but I have my reservations. I think it is just right at the moment. Why change things?”

THE HUNTSMAN

[Johnnie O’Shea, 66, and wife, Ann, Moss Wood Cottage. On the estate 12 years. Still keeps greyhounds for coursing].

“I love the horse and I love the hound, I do. They have been my life. I have five greyhounds and two puppies and I think a lot of them. I look after them day and night. We go coursing all over the country. It’s a grand way of life and that bloody Tony Blair is a fool with all this talk of banning hunting.

My wife went down to London to take part in that women’s protest against the ban. They were all supposed to be flashing their knickers, but I told her not to bother wearing any. Ha, ha! “I’m not a Labour man, not a Labour man at all. They talk rubbish, they do.

“I mow the lawns around here. It gives me something to do. I have a drink and a natter with people. It’s a nice life. Sometimes I get asked to blow the hunting horn at weddings. Recently I was asked to go to a wedding reception at Annabel’s in London to do it. The bride and groom wrote to me later to say it was the icing on the cake for them. They said, ‘There’s no-one who can blow a horn like you’ — which was very nice of them.

“Her ladyship is a wonderful woman. She has no airs and graces. She often drops in here for a gin and tonic. Once when she came round she suddenly said: ‘Do you mind if I look upstairs?’ I said, of course, and she looked out of the window and said: ‘This is just like our house Johnnie. You can’t see another house.’

“We are so lucky. What’s the point if you can’t stop and talk to people, or listen to the birds in the morning?”

MEANWHILE IN KENYA

Thomas Cholmondeley, heir to Kenya's most famous white settler family, has been convicted of manslaughter for shooting a black poacher on his family's estate in Kenya, Soysambu.

Known as the Soysambu Conservancy since it diversified from cattle-breeding into wildlife conservation, the estate is about 19,000 hectares (48,000 acres).

There were gasps of surprise in May 2009 as Kenyan High Court Justice Muga Apondi gave his ruling after reading out a 320-page verdict on the case, although the defendant himself remained impassive.

"I find as a fact that the accused shot the deceased resulting in his death," the judge said. "However, I find that the accused did not have any malice aforethought to kill the deceased."

The incident took place in a remote corner of Cholmondeley's sprawling family farm in the Rift Valley region, acquired by his great-grandfather, the third Baron Delamere.

Cholmondeley told police at the time that Mr Robert Njoya was with three companions and a pack of dogs, and he suspected them of hunting a gazelle. He said he had shot at the dogs, killing two of them. Mr Njoya was hit by a bullet and died on the way to hospital.

In 2005 in a separate case, Cholmondeley admitted shooting Maasai ranger Samson Ole Sisina but the case was dropped owing to insufficient evidence. He said he had acted in self defence after mistaking Samson for an armed robber.

IN THE OLD DAYS

We used to get transported to Van Diemen’s Land for the same offence.

Issy Blow - Titfer-topped Toff

FIRST THE OBITUARY & THEN SOME CONNECTIONS

Isabella Delves Broughton, fashion journalist and stylist: born 19 November 1958; married 1981 Nicholas Taylor (marriage dissolved 1983), 1989 Detmar Blow; died Gloucester 7 May 2007.

Flamboyant, fragile, yet completely, utterly fearless, Isabella Blow was the ultimate English eccentric. An unmissable sight on the fashion circuit, Blow was known for many things, but primarily for discovering the designer Alexander McQueen, nurturing new talent and obliterating the view of customers at the Paris couture shows.

Heads would invariably swivel as Blow entered any fashion arena - be it a run-down warehouse in the East End or a rarefied atelier in Paris. Her dress-code remained an elegant version of the fashion cliché " classic with a twist". Teetering on satin stiletto Manolos, wearing couture gown, feathered hat and smeared ruby lipstick,

Blow was a dishevelled bird of paradise who didn't give a damn about convention.

She discovered Sophie Dahl sobbing in a doorway; she bought Alexander McQueen's entire degree show, and had Philip Treacy design her wedding hat when she married Detmar Blow in 1988 - as well being credited with discovering Hussein Chalayan and Stella Tennant.

She also worked as Anna Wintour's assistant on American Vogue, then for Michael Roberts at Tatler, then British Vogue, then The Sunday Times - and ultimately she returned to Tatler as fashion director. Convinced she was ugly, she almost always wore a Treacy hat that would obscure her face, accessorized with her famous slash of red lipstick - MAC designed one in homage to her.

She loved to gossip, talking 20 to the dozen, dropping names, witticisms and acute observations, and invariably ending her sentences with a deafening roar of laughter. In the manner of penniless aristocrats everywhere, Blow was no good with money and identified with Oscar Wilde's assertion that "anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination".

Blow's role in the fashion industry was impossible to define. Incredibly perceptive, inventive and intuitive, she worked completely on instinct, her butterfly mind flitting from arranging a big-name fashion shoot to pursuing the unsuspecting mother of a young fashion student, aka the Next Big Thing.

Although her last official title was as Fashion Editor at Large at Tatler, Blow, flitting in and out of the office, with a life far larger - and more complex - than her job, was an agent provocateur.

She had, during her career, worked at The Sunday Times and been an unlikely consultant at Dupont, Lycra and Swarovski crystal. Her natural habitat, however, was Condé Nast. Emma Soames, former Editor of Tatler, who employed the 22-year-old Blow to work with her Fashion Editor Michael Roberts, says that she came into the world a fully formed fashion editor.

Utterly uncompromising. She just loved it. She just breathed it all. She once came in to see me wearing what could only be described as a pussy pelmet, suspenders and ripped stockings. I thought, "Oh, here we go again, creative person wants to leave." But in fact, she sat down and said, completely seriously, "I'm very, very worried about my pension." Of course, it was never mentioned again.

She was born Isabella Delves Broughton in 1958, daughter of Sir Evelyn Delves Broughton Bt and his wife Helen Shore - her grandfather was Sir " Jock" Delves Broughton of White Mischief fame, who was tried for the murder in Kenya of the Earl of Erroll (and acquitted).

Isabella was educated at Heathfield School and, after her A- levels, enrolled at a secretarial academy. In 1979 she decamped to the United States, briefly attending Columbia University to study ancient Chinese art.

In the early years of her career she led the life of a dilettante - dabbling in various jobs to make a living, eventually finding her métier when she was introduced to Anna Wintour at American Vogue. Isabella Delves Broughton became Wintour's assistant and Wintour her mentor. Wintour has described her as an "amazingly bright light in a world of increasingly corporate culture".

After a brief early marriage, Delves Broughton met Detmar Blow at a friend's wedding in 1988. She claimed he was initially attracted not to her face but to her outlandish hat. They were married in medieval style at Gloucester Cathedral in 1989.

They made an extraordinary couple at gallery openings and fashion happenings, with Detmar in bespoke pinstripe suits and Isabella a vision of aristocratic messiness, resembling a latter-day Miss Havisham.

In 1990, Blow made the transfer from Tatler to Vogue, then under the editorship of Liz Tilberis. She had already spotted and promoted the milliner Philip Treacy; he made the medieval headpiece she wore to her wedding the year before he graduated from the Royal College of Art.

Without a London workroom, Blow knew, Treacy could sink without a trace, and so she installed him in the basement of her home, secured him a contract to design for Chanel and continued to wear his outlandish concoctions for the rest of her life.

It was during this time that she not only discovered Alexander McQueen but reinvented him. Blow was sitting in the audience of McQueen's MA show at St Martin's and, taken with his collection, relentlessly pursued him.

She rang his home, his mother and his tutor, then wore his graduation collection in a Vogue shoot at the Blows' Gloucestershire estate, Hilles, in November 1992. It was she who persuaded the former Lee McQueen to change his name to Alexander (as in Alexander the Great, she said).

Although she secured financial security for McQueen - over dinner, she persuaded Tom Ford to convince the Gucci powers-that-be to back McQueen - Blow was left with nothing but reflected glory.

Despite her promotion of fledgeling fashion talent, she never made a bean. When her father died in 1993, leaving £6m, Blow discovered that she had been left only £5,000.

But she had many things that money can't buy: presence, style and legions of loyal friends.

She suffered from depression all her life, but after her separation from and then reconciliation with Detmar, the illness came to the surface with alarming regularity. She made suicide attempts, throwing herself off a bridge and trying to drown herself in a lake.

Earlier this year, she was diagnosed with cancer. Issy's sister-in-law Selina Blow told me on Friday that she had "the most star-studded visitor list in the NHS".

"There was something other-worldly about her," says Emma Soames. "I think it was a great sadness that she never had a child. Although she was from another world, essentially she was made of flesh and blood like the rest of us. The same things made her cry."

Isabella died on Sunday, May 6 2007, having been treated for cancer and severe depression for some months, at the age of 48. Philip Treacy designed a black feathered hat for her cortege and a funeral was held in The Guards Chapel where the whole fashion world descended in their most appropriate outfits to pay their respects

[Composite from: Linda Watson & Jo Craven]

MY INTEREST

The Broughtons are descended from the ancient Vernon family of Cheshire and in particular from Richard Vernon, fourth son of the 3rd medieval Baron Vernon of Shipbrook, Cheshire. Adam, his son, was of Napton, Warwickshire. Adams's grandson Roger acquired the estate at Broughton, Staffordshire, from which the surname derives, in the 13th century.

Their 'seat' Doddington Hall near Nantwich, Cheshire is a large private Grade 1 mansion designed by Samuel Wyatt built ca.1780. It is set in gardens landscaped by Capability Brown, overlooking Doddington Lake, a popular sailing venue. The 13th century castle is to the north of the Hall.

['The house is at the moment the subject of substantial building works which are being effected in four phases. Stage I (refurbishing the exterior) has been completed. Parties wishing to view the exterior (and the interior by appointment only because the site remains extremely hazardous) should write to: The Farm Manager, Doddington Park Farm, Nantwich'].

The first Baronet was the son of Thomas Broughton (died 1648) who was an ardent Royalist and supporter of Charles I and who was obliged to 'compound at a cost of £3,200', for the return of his estates following sequestration by the Parliament at the conclusion of the Civil War. His son was honoured with the Baronetcy at the Restoration of Charles II.

Isabella was the eldest child of Major Sir Evelyn Delves Broughton, a military officer, and his second wife, Helen Mary Shore, a barrister. She had three siblings: two sisters, Julia and Lavinia, and a brother, John, who drowned in the family's swimming pool at the age of two, and whose death contributed to the family's imminent fracture.

In 1972, when she was 14, her parents separated and her mother left the household, shaking each daughter by the hand. Her parents divorced two years later. Isabella did not get along with her father, who bequeathed her only £5,000 from his estate, which was worth more than one million pounds. Blow often said her fondest memory was trying on her mother's pink hat, a recollection that she explained led to her career in fashion.

I have a vivid memory of hearing the news of the death of her infant brother John in 1964, when I was 20 years old. Though, as I remembered the terribly sad story, the toddler had drowned in an ornamental pond at Doddington Hall.

Although the aristocracy was a separate breed, they provided the gossip that fuelled conversation back in the 1950s in the way that people now draw on the tabloids and trashy magazines to follow the problems and peccadilloes of Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie etc. In fact seeing the frontispiece photo spread of the latest debutante in the Cheshire Life - say The Hon. Arabella Hunt-Cropper – was about as close as many people came to a pin-up at the time.

I remembered the Cheshire connection when I went to see a special exhibition of Issy's hats that was being shown at the excellent Dowse Museum, Lower Hutt about a year ago.

THE CONNECTION TO THE CHOLMONDELEYS

Issy’s grandfather Sir Henry John 'Jock' Delves Broughton, 11th Baronet (1883 - 5 December 1942) inherited the baronetcy of Broughton in 1914. Sir Jock also inherited some 34,000 acres (140 km²) of family estate in Cheshire, but was forced to sell off most of it in the 1930s to pay gambling debts.

On the outbreak of World War I, as a captain in the 1st Battalion of the Irish Guards, he was due to sail on the troop ship SS Novara, but was taken ill and had to be replaced before the ship sailed.

In 1939 he was suspected of insurance fraud after the theft of his wife's pearls and some paintings, on which he claimed the insurance.

He was married twice: to Vera Edyth Griffith-Boscawen in 1913, divorcing in 1940; then in 1941 to Diana Caldwell (d. 1987), daughter of Seymour Caldwell. After his death, Diana remarried twice, the second time to Thomas Cholmondeley, 4th Baron Delamere.

‘Jock’ is chiefly known for his trial in Kenya for the murder of 22nd Earl of Erroll, who had been conducting an affair with his wife Diana. These events were dramatized in the film White Mischief.

It appears that Erroll and Diana had something of a 'Some Enchanted Evening' meeting of needs 'across a crowded room' in the Muthaiga Club. One assumes that this was during an interlude in Lord Delamere's odd habit of chipping golf balls on to the roof of the Club with a 5-iron.

The Earl of Erroll was shot dead, by a single pistol bullet in the head, in his car at a crossroads outside Nairobi in 1941, the year after Sir Jock had moved to Kenya with his new wife Diana to join the Happy Valley set, a group of British colonials living in the Happy Valley region of Kenya (& 'ruled' it seems by Lord Delamere).

Alice de Janzé was initially viewed by the community as a suspect (a previous mistress of the Earl, she had shot and seriously wounded an earlier lover). But Sir Jock soon became the police's prime suspect and was tried for the murder.

He was acquitted for lack of evidence, a conclusion that hinged chiefly on the identification of the gun used. Sir Jock's pistol was a Colt with 6 rifling grooves, and Erroll was killed by a bullet with 5 grooves. No pistol was produced at the trial by Sir Walter Harragin, prosecuting attorney for the Crown, or by the defendant.

Broughton claimed that two of his pistols, a silver cigarette case and 10 or 20 shillings were stolen 3 or 4 days before Erroll's death.

Superintendent Arthur Poppy, a policeman dealing with the case, claimed that Sir Jock had stolen the guns from himself to give the impression that he had no .32 pistol at the time. Additionally, the fatal bullet's rifling was clockwise. Colts use anti-clockwise rifling.

A telegram was sent to the Colt Company in America to clear up the confusion. Another bullet also was fired at Erroll, missed and after ricocheting off a metal pillar in Erroll's car, ended up near the accelerator. It also had 5 grooves and clockwise turning.

A number of books have been written about the case, notably James Fox's investigation White Mischief: The Murder of Lord Erroll, later made into a film White Mischief (1987).

In May 2007 in the Daily Telegraph, author Christine Nicholls described taped evidence claimed to be definitive proof that Sir Jock was the murderer.

The Cholmondeleys of Cholmondeley (or Chumleys of Chumley)

NO IFS AND BUTS

Although apparently quiet and decorously rural, Wettenhall (the village where I grew up in Cheshire) had actually been the scene of a serious rift between those who followed the Anglican (‘C of E’) communion and those who were Methodists in the tradition of John Wesley. The 15-20 farming families were more or less split down the middle.

By the 1950s, the distinction was becoming little more than a curiosity. There were however still complications. When my sister decided to marry her otherwise eminently suitable beau from a neighbouring farm, there was consternation that, as the Hollinsheads were ‘Methodees”, we might be reduced to serving orange juice at the wedding reception.

Anyhow, this storm passed over. But my brother-in-law John faced a challenging situation some years later after he had become the tenant of Bankhouse Farm on the Cholmondely Estate. In the early 1980s Lord Cholmondeley faced a problem in the Estate Chapel (a beautiful example of a Puritan Chapel that is the sole remnant of a former Jacobean Mansion).

The problem as explained by his Lordship was that ‘the current Verger is a bit past it’. ‘John’, he said, ‘You are the man for the job’. ‘But Your Lordship’, he protested, ‘I am Methodist’. ‘Not too worry’ was the reply, ‘I have already talked it through with the Bishop’. So that was that. And that also was very much how the aristocracy got their way – no ifs and buts were allowed.

The Hugh Cholmondeley known to my family was the 6th Marquess of Cholmondeley (1919-1990). He was the son of George Cholmondeley, 5th Marquess of Cholmondeley and Sybil Sassoon, of the Sassoon and Rothschild family. Cholmondeley's acceded to his father's land, estates and title in 1968, and his inherited title became Marquess of Cholmondeley.

Cholmondeley served in British army, initially in the Grenadier Guards and later in the 1st Royal Dragoons. During the Second World War, he saw action in the Middle East, in Italy, in France and in Germany. In 1943, he was decorated with the award of Military Cross (MC). When Cholmondeley retired from the military in 1949, he had attained the rank of Major.

CHOLMONDELEY FAMILY HISTORY

The Cholmondeleys apparently trace their ancestry to William Le Belward, Baron of Malpas, who married Tanglust, the natural daughter of Hugh Kevelioc, Earl of Chester in the late 11th Century.

The family later prospered through its connections with the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy. In 1659, Robert Cholmondeley, 1st Viscount Cholmondeley succeeded to the estates of his uncle Lord Leinster and two years later he was raised to the Peerage of Ireland as Viscount Cholmondeley, of Kells in the County of Meath.

Robert’s eldest son Hugh supported the claim of William and Mary to the English throne, and after their accession in 1689 he was rewarded when he was made Baron Cholmondeley, of Namptwich (Nantwich) in Cheshire, in the Peerage of England (which gave him a seat in the House of Lords).

At this time in history, the original Anglo-Irish (and generally Catholic) nobility was being replaced by ‘loyal’ Protestants and there were great fortunes and enormous estates to be won by those who played their cards right.

As Lord Cholmondeley, he was appointed Comptroller of the Household by Queen Anne in 1708. He held this post only until October of the same year, when he was made Treasurer of the Household. He was stripped of this office in 1713 but restored when George I became king in 1714. He died in 1725.

He was succeeded by his younger brother George, the second Earl. He was a prominent military commander and commanded the Horse Guards at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.

In 1715, ten years before he succeeded his elder brother, he was raised to the Peerage of Ireland in his own right as Baron Newborough, of Newborough in the County of Wexford, and in 1716 he was made Baron Newburgh, in the Isle of Anglesey, in the Peerage of Great Britain.

On his death the titles passed to his son, the third Earl. He was a politician and held office as Lord Privy Seal and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

The current family is also directly descended from Sir Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, (26 August 1676 – 18 March 1745), who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain.

A Whig (i.e. Liberal) who was first elected in 1701, Walpole served during the reigns of George I and George II. His tenure is normally dated from 1721 when he obtained the post of First Lord of the Treasury; others date it from 1730 when, with the retirement of Lord Townshend, he became the sole and undisputed leader of the Cabinet.

Walpole continued to govern until his resignation in 1742 prompted by the Battle of Cartagena disaster, making his administration the longest in British history. Because of his homely ways and strong Norfolk roots, he was often known to both friends and detractors as the Norfolk Squire.

On 30 July 1700, Walpole married Catherine Shorter (died 20 August 1737), with whom he later had two daughters and four sons. His second daughter Mary Walpole (c. 1705—2 January 1732) married the 3rd Earl of Cholmondeley on 14 September 1723 and had two sons.

The Fourth Earl was a successful career politician and courtier who became the Earl of Rocksavage and the Marquess of Cholmondeley in 1815.

THE KENYAN MOSES IN HAPPY VALLEY

The most notorious of the recent Cholmondeleys was Hugh Cholmondeley, 3rd Baron Delamere (28 April 1870 - 13 November 1931) who was one of the first and most influential British settlers in Kenya. In this he appears to have sought to emulate the successes of his ancestors in ‘settling’ Ireland.

Hugh Delamere (the son of Hugh Cholmondeley, 2nd Baron Delamere, and Augusta Emily Seymour) moved to Kenya in 1901. He was as famous for his tireless labours to establish a working agricultural economy in Africa as he was for childish antics among his European friends when he was at his leisure.

He made his first trip to Africa in 1891 to hunt lion in Somaliland, and returned yearly to resume the hunt. In 1894 he was severely mauled by an attacking lion, and was only saved when his Somali gunbearer Abdullah Ashur leaped on the lion, giving Delamere time to retrieve his rifle. As a result of the attack, Lord Delamere limped for the rest of his life; he also developed a healthy respect for Somalis (and presumably lions!).

It is believed that on one of these Somaliland hunting trips, Delamere coined the term “white hunter” – the term which came to describe the professional safari hunter in colonial East Africa.

Delamere employed a professional hunter named Alan Black and a native Somali hunter to lead the safari. As the story goes, in order to avoid confusion, the Somali was referred to as the "black hunter," and Black was called the "white hunter."

In 1896, Delamere, with a retinue including a doctor, taxidermist, photographer, and 200 camels, set out to cross the deserts of southern Somaliland, intending to enter British East Africa from the north. In 1897, he arrived in the lush green highlands of what is now central Kenya.

In 1899, Delamere married Lady Florence Anne Cole, daughter of Lowry Egerton Cole, 4th Earl of Enniskillen. The couple soon sought to relocate to the Kenya highlands.

Around 1903, he received a 99-year lease on 100,000 acres (400 km2) of land that would be named “Equator Ranch,” requiring him to pay a £200 annual rent and to spend £5000 on the land over the first five years of occupancy.

In 1906, he acquired a large farm, which would eventually include more than 200,000 acres (800 km²), located between the Molo River and Njoro town. This ranch he named Soysambu. Together, these vast possessions made Delamere one of Kenya's "largemen" - the local name for the handful of colonists with the most substantial land holdings.

In 1905, Delamere was a pioneer of the East African dairy industry but most of his imported animals succumbed to diseases such as foot and mouth and Red water disease. Eventually, Delamere decided to grow wheat but this too, was plagued by disease, specifically rust.

By 1909, Delamere was out of money, resting his last hopes on a 1,200-acre (4.9 km2) wheat crop that eventually failed. He was quoted by author Elspeth Huxley as commenting drily, “I started to grow wheat in East Africa to prove that though I lived on the equator, I was not in an equatorial country.”

To supplement his income, he even tried raising ostriches for their feathers, importing incubators from Europe; this venture also failed with the advent on the motor car and the decline in fashion of feathered hats.

Delamere was active in recruiting settlers to East Africa, promising new colonists 640 acres (2.6 km2), with 200 people eventually responding. He persuaded some of his friends among the English landed gentry to buy large estates like his own and take up life in Kenya.

He is credited with helping to found the so-called Happy Valley set, a clique of well-off British colonials whose pleasure-seeking habits eventually degenerated into drug-taking and wife-swapping.

The story is often told of Delamere riding his horse into the dining room of Nairobi’s Norfolk Hotel and jumping over the tables. He was also known to knock golf balls onto the roof of the Muthaiga Club, the pink stucco gathering-place for Nairobi's white elite, and then climb up to retrieve them.

"The extension of European civilization was in itself a desirable thing," he wrote in 1927. "The British race... was superior to heterogeneous African races only now emerging from centuries of relative barbarism... the opening up of new areas by means of genuine colonisation was to the advantage to the world."

And a contemporary and former colonist said: “His ascendancy over the settlers of Kenya has been enjoyed long enough for him to expect all men – and women – to do his bidding, and do it promptly. He is their Moses. For 25 years he has been their guide.”

Delamere died in November 1931 at age 61, leaving unpaid bank loans totaling £500,000 (£15-20 million in today’s terms).

THE NEW ZEALAND SAINT

The Venerable George James Cholomondeley, sometime Archdeacon of Christchurch and Vicar of Opawa, belonged to a branch of one of the oldest and noblest families of England; he was closely related to the Marquis of Cholomondeley, and was a cousin of the present Lord Delamere. The history of these families dates back to the eleventh century.

The late Archdeacon's estate at Port Levy is named after the old family seat, “Vale Royal,” the residence of the present Lord Delamere. He was born at Peel, Isle of Man, in 1833, and came to New Zealand in the early 1850s. He was temporarily located as curate at St. Michael's, Christchurch, and afterwards became vicar of the pastoral cure of the Waimakariri.

In 1862 he was appointed to the parish of Heathcote, where he remained until 1875. He was Diocesan Secretary from 1887 to 1890, and became vicar of Opawa in 1875, a canon of the Christchurch Cathedral in 1882, and Archdeacon of Christchurch in 1890.

During his lifetime Archdeacon Cholmondeley published many valuable works on religious subjects, notably, “Retrospect and Prospect,” and “Church Work,” together with other single sermons.

In 1876 he wrote a reply to the tract, “Does the Church of England Sanction Auricular Confession,” and in 1885 he published a pamphlet, entitled, “Clergy Pensions.”

Archdeacon Cholmondeley was a member of the Historical Committee of the Canterbury Natives' Association, and the very complete work, containing the names of the Canterbury pioneers who arrived in the ships of the Canterbury Association, was compiled mainly by him.

After a long life spent in the service of the Church, Archdeacon Cholmondeley died at the vicarage of Opawa, on the 11th of December, 1901, deeply regretted by all classes and denominations.

He left behind the Cholmondeley Home which is still open.

‘Located down Cholmondeley Lane, overlooking the sea, Cholmondeley is a house full of love, warmth and hope. We support the children of Canterbury when their parents cannot. Our children are aged between 3 and 12 years. They come from families with issues including severe illness, substance abuse and addiction, or the death of a parent. Cholmondeley has been supporting the children of Canterbury for 85 years and we are very proud of the quality of care we provide.

Apart from the first impression of the grand old house overlooking the sea, you're also likely to be greeted by the wafts of home baking from the kitchen. At any one time, around 28 children stay at Cholmondeley for an average of 10 days. Regardless of the duration of their stay each child gets love, support, structure, nutrition and care of the highest possible quality'.

[Many thanks to my fellow NZ Blogger Sandy for the tip-off about the NZ connection.

I recommend Sandy's Blog:

RANDOM MEANDERINGS: My Taphophiliac, genealogy, heritage and hobby interests]