Lord
Maurice Egerton
A story is told of a guy named Lord
Maurice Egerton who was the lastborn son of a royal family in England. He was
born in 1874 and had two siblings who died young leaving him as the only
inheritant to the family’s vast wealth. Lord Maurice worked in the Royal Navy
until 1920 when his father died. He thus succeeded his father as the fourth
baron of Egerton. He loved hunting and photography and this set him on a travel
tour of the world.
He came to Africa through Zimbabwe,
to Congo then to Uganda and eventually entered Kenya in 1927 where he stayed
for the rest of his life.
Lord Maurice settled around Nakuru
where he bought acres of farming land from Delamere.
Being from a royal family, he set to
marry a girl of similar status and found himself a beauty from the lineage of
Queen Elizabeth named Victoria. He had built a six bed-roomed cottage where he
lived and thought it impress the girl of his dream. When he invited Victoria to
his house, she dismissed the cottage as a ‘chicken cage’ in which she could
never live in. Lord Maurice, still hopeful for the girl, decided to build a castle
magnificent enough to impress the girl. He imagined a 52-roomed mansion that
would have no comparison in England or any other country. He started the
project in 1938, hiring an architect from England, construction workers from
Italy and labourers from India with much of the materials being imported.
Nearing completion, Lord Maurice
invited his fiancé to live with him. The lady did not take more than two hours
before driving away describing the house as being “small like a dog’s kennel”. She
had rejected him before on several occasions in the presence of his friends. She
then left Maurice and went to Australia to marry the son of another royal
family.
Dejected and heartbroken, Lord
Maurice decided to proceed nevertheless and completed the house in 1954. He
employed 16 male servants and demanded that their women stay away and that they
should never keep chicken or dogs. Men visiting him were asked to leave their
women 8 kilometres away. He hated chicken and dogs because Victoria had likened
his houses to them
He henceforth dedicated his life to farming, hunting and development of education giving birth to Egerton University.
He henceforth dedicated his life to farming, hunting and development of education giving birth to Egerton University.
He now hated women so much that he
banned them from his compound and actually pinned notices on trees warning women
that they risked being shot at if they ever came anywhere close to his 100-acre
piece of land on which the mansion was built. Nobody was allowed into the
castle except the servants. It is said that whenever 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. Lord Maurice Egerton died in 1958 with
no heir after living alone in his castle for only 4 years.
The magnificent castle is now
owned by Egerton University as a tourist attraction.
