Stories:- A lady asked Gilbert if he wouldn't give her a tiny piece of his land for her few cattle to graze. 'You have so much, Gilbert' she said 'You would never even notice'. Gilbert, who was known to be very mean said 'That's what the burglar said!' Source: Ann Staniland.

Last Chance - (1948) - On the far side of blue Lake Naivasha you will see the white-turreted Moorish residence which used to belong to Lord Errol. It now belongs to G.C., who ranches more cattle than any man in Kenya - all native beasts. It is said (though I can't know with what truth) that if the warrior Masai ever had the chance to pick a delegate to represent them on the Kenya Legislative Council, it would be this quiet but very tough little man. He knows more about the Masai, and their cattle, than any European in the Colony. He has some 30000 acres around Naivasha, and much more than that elsewhere. He prefers native cattle to European because they are more or less immune to the tick fevers, and by skilful up-breeding he has produced a very good grade of beast.

Midday Sun - 'probably he would never have settled in EA had he not blown off several toes while shooting rabbits, which disqualified him from taking up the commission in his father's regiment that he had gained on leaving Sandhurst. Soon after his father's death in 1907 he and his mother came to EA on the usual shooting trip. Gilbert so much liked what he saw that he gave up all idea of the army and decided to become a pioneer instead. After Lullington [the family seat] was sold he was joined by his mother, but she did not share his dwelling. Like D. and Galbraith Cole, Colvile became a Masai addict. He learned their language, respected their independent spirit, admired their physique and tapped their expertise in cattle management. He also shared their indifference to comfort, and lived in a shack overrun by ill-disciplined dogs and furnished with the skins of wild animals imperfectly cured, and therefore smelly. As he acquired more land he ran up more dwellings; the living room of one of these was panelled with the skins of lions. ............ He used to travel with a Masai herdsman clutching a spear in the front seat of his car. Colvile lived like a Masai, a Somali said [in conversation with James Fox] which put him quite beyond the pale. I remember Gilbert Colvile as a smallish, wiry, rather wizened man, reserved but not unfriendly, who willingly answered my questions about D. his neighbour and friend. In later life he looked rather like a tortoise. His Masai name was Nyasore, meaning the lean man. 'When he was hunting he would go all day with only an egg and a cup of tea in his stomach,' one of his servants told Mirella Ricciardi, daughter of the Roccos who lived at Naivasha. 'Nyasore was a Masai like us. There has never been another white man like him.' He was a great hunter, especially of lions, and kept a pack of mongrel dogs who bayed the quarry until Colvile came up and shot it; I have been told that he destroyed over 250 lions in this way. One of his managers recalls seeing him draw his pistol and shoot a dog that misbehaved itself during a lion hunt. To protect himself from thorns he wore a jacket and trousers made from the skins of antelopes he had shot and cured himself. His initial ranch was Ndabibi, lying to the north and north-west of Lake Naivasha and eventually covering 40000 acres. His neighbours the Carnellys, were ardent conservationists, which Colvile most emphatically was not. He accused Stephen Carnelly of harbouring lions that devoured his, Colvile's, cattle, and then returned to sanctuary on Carnelly's land. As a result the two were not on speaking terms. Colvile was a dangerous enemy. Stephen Carnelly owned two small islands in the lake and kept them as a sanctuary for birds and hippos. Colvile set fire to them, destroying the bird life and forcing the hippos to seek new homes. An odd quirk in Colvile's character was a passion for fires. ........ His mind and his heart were centred on his cattle ........ he built up one of the country's best and largest herds of beef cattle. So he made money, a lot of money; on his death he was said to be worth over two and a half million pounds. 'To meet him you would think he had no money at all. He was very hard on his managers,' one of them told me, 'and very mean as well.' Despite this, most of them stuck to him, one for over 34 years, another for nearly 20. Those who stood up to him did best. ........... Like many rich people he would swallow a camel and strain at a gnat. He would buy an expensive tractor without a second thought but quibble at the cost of half a dozen pangas. ......... Everything he made he put into buying more land and breeding more cattle, until he possessed 5 separate properties totalling about 265000 acres. (The largest, Lariak on the Laikipia plains, covered 160000 acres.) His beef herd numbered about 20000 head. In order to expand the sale and improve the quality of local beef, he started a cold storage company, and was one of the founders of the KMC, and its first chairman. This entailed visits to Nairobi, and his shabby appearance - a rather dirty bush shirt and trousers, no tie and no socks - caused raised eyebrows among some of his tidier colleagues. Michael Blundell found him rude. Once, at a meeting, Michael addressed the chairman as Gilbert. 'My name is Colvile' was the frosty reply. ......... Politics held no appeal .......... (more re subversives on the farm during Mau Mau and his hiring lawyers to get them off) ........ Colvile avoided women and took no part in Muthaiga's revels. Austere in habit he did not smoke and touched no alcohol. Masai snuff, raw and strong, seemed to be his only indulgence. Then, at the age of 55, came an extraordinary volte-face ........... Colvile felt sorry for Diana Delves-Broughton and wrote to tell her so. .......... He bought her a mansion on the shores of Naivasha whose Moorish look, with white crenellated walls and a minaret, had earned it the title of the Djinn Palace. Oserian was its real name. It had been built by Major Cyril Ramsay-Hill for his wife Molly, who had subnsequently married Joss Erroll. .............. To everyone's amazement, Gilbert and Diana married. .......... The marriage appeared to be a happy one and lasted for 12 years. Gilbert taught Diana to ride about the plains, sustained by Masai snuff, and muster cattle, while Diana weaned Gilbert from some of his Masai ways and, when she could, from some of his more parsimonious habits. ....... There was a tragedy: a son was born, and lived only for a few days. ....... Later Diana fell in love with Tom Delamere and they were divorced and she married Delamere. ....... Colvile stayed on at Oserian, keeping a close eye on his cattle at Ndabibi and his other estates. He remained on good terms with Diana and Tom, who sometimes came to stay at Oserian, and all 3 would be seen together at Nairobi races; but his life was, in the main, a lonely one. He had few friends. He and Diana had adopted a daughter, but she was away at school or else with her mother. His austere habits scarcely changed, and an excellent cook was sadly under-used. He reverted to one former custom; almost every evening his Dorobo headman, oddly named Swahili, would squat down on the living-room carpet and converse for an hour or so with his employer in Masai. His constant companion was a pug called Peggy, a present from Diana. Peggy was buried beside him at Ndabibi after he had died in Nairobi hospital, following a stroke, in August 1966, aged 78. His infant son lies there also, with Tom Delamere as well. He left Diana all his property, together with his mother's jewels.'
Gethin - 'I went to Loydien as Manager during June 1911, and found John Drury, Frank Hobson and Gilbert Colvile, also Emmie Drury, John's sister, all living on the estate. Colvile I had met in England about 1906 when I was stationed at Litchfield barracks. He had just been accepted for a commission in the Grenadier Guards but never joined them. A few days after I had met him at a party his mother gave to celebrate his commission to the Guards, he went out shooting rabbits, had a gun accident, and shot off the toes on one of his feet. I understand Gilbert became very depressed and disappointed at not being able to take up his commission. His mother, Lady Colvile, thought it would be good for Gilbert to get away from England for a time, so wrote to me in Ireland to say when she had met me at Litchfield I had mentioned I was leaving the army and going to BEA. She thought I might be able to give her some information about the country. She and her son had arranged to sail for Cape Town and take a shooting safari through Rhodesia and the Congo to Nairobi. Colvile was very well off. His mother and himself had arrived in the country shortly before I did and so liked it that they did not return to the UK. Lady Colvile bought a farm near Gilgil and I frequently stayed there. She also bought the Gilgil hotel which was well managed in those days. When I got to Loydien Gilbert was there learning stock farming. I do not know who was supposed to be teaching him as both Drury and Hobson refused to have anything to do with the farm and myself, although we were all good friends and had our meals together. ........ Colvile had four ponies and a pack of about 27 dogs of mixed breed, with which we used to hunt jackal, and when tired of this sport we would go sailing on the lake.

Gethin diary 1911 - Molo - Mar. 10th - 'Evans and Colvile come and stay the night on the way to Lumbwa.' Mar. 14th - 'Evans and Colvile return to Keringet'.

Gethin diary 1911 - Loydien - July 12 - 'Colvile and self go to lunch with the Hockleys. Go hunting in the evening. Colvile with spear, self with seme dogs hunt a pig which comes for Colvile and gets him by the foot. Colvile misses him with his spear and dogs drive it down a hole where we kill it.'  

Rhodora - 1953 - Visit to Gilbert Colvile's - house built in the style of a Moorish palace at Lake Naivasha. Mrs Colvile (Diana) was quite informal in blue tight-fitting trousers. She possessed as hard a face as one can imagine, was not extraordinarily beautiful, but was amusing and entertaining in her conversation. Colvile himself was nice, and much older. He obviously adored her.

Mischief - had been at Eton with Delves Broughton and Lord Francis Scott. He had become one of the most Africanised of Masai-lovers, and he was among the biggest cattle ranchers in the country. A small, awkward, chinless man, he was also a miser and a hermit, who lived in comparative squalor with his many dogs, and whose house had the sour, woodsmoke smell of the Masai boma. He dressed with conspicuous shabbiness and knew as much about cattle as the Masai themselves. ....... 'Colvile was the most boring man in the world', said his neighbour on Lake Naivasha, a trophy hunting Austrian called Baron Knapitsch. 'He could only talk about cattle and rain. He didnt drink or smoke cigarettes.' .............. he was educated at Eton and Sandhurst, formerly a Lieutenant with the Grenadier Guards, and a member of the Guards Club, was looked down on by the Somalis Fox spoke to - possibly because of his love for the Masai. ................ Perhaps Colvile was a misanthropist. He was a lonely, taciturn dour man, according to Sir Michael Blundell. 'He would appear at the Meat Board, on which Tom Delamere also sat, in a large, wide, pork pie hat, crushed on top. No socks, of course, and a rumpled, lightweight tweed suit. When I tried to call him Gilbert, he said "My name's Colvile".' .......... married Diana in Jan 1943 ......... Diana lost 2 children - the first lived for 10 days, the second was stillborn. Diana and Colvile adopted a daughter, Sarah, known as 'Snoo'. ........... Diana fell in love with Tom Delamere and Colvile agreed, in 1955 to an amicable divorce. ...........Diana married Tom........... When Colvile died he left everything to Diana. The most conservative estimate of the proceeds of Diana's sale of Colvile's property, to raise death duties, was £2.5 million. ...... Diana buried Tom Delamere in the little walled cemetery she built on Colvile's farm at Ndabibi, alongside Colvile and her only child, who had lived for 10 days.

Tobina Cole writes - Gilbert Colvile I knew well. His mother Lady Colvile was a frequent visitor at Naivasha when I was young. When Arthur and I started farming Gilbert helped us in every way, helping to choose bulls, cull heifers. We saw a lot of him even after he married Diana, as our nanny Biddy Young was a friend of the Colvile nanny so there was much coming and going with the nursery party.

Red 22 - Honorary Permit Issuer

EA Stud Book 1954 - Thoroughbred Stallions -Mr G. Colvile, Naivasha

Kelly - patron of the living and lord of the manor of Lullington, Derbyshire; 2nd Lieut. Grenadier Guards 1907-8

Gazette - 7/4/15 - Liable for Jury service, Naivasha - Gilbert Colville [sic] (British), Settler, Naivasha

Medals - East African Intelligence Department - Warrant Officer Class 1

Hughes - In anecdotal evidence, [Desmond] Bristow and the current Lord Delamere describe Colvile as an eccentric who chose to dress in home-sewn shorts made from Tommy skins, lived almost entirely off meat and bananas, laced with the occasional glass of sherry, and could be found of an evening sunk in a high-sided leather chair built like a pub snug, taking Masai snuff while burning the shrub o-leleshua, whose aroma filed the room. He had adenoids, and spoke very strangely when he spoke at all. ………….. Colvile was the classic penny-pincher who made pounds grow. Though worth millions, his home at Ntapipi had no modern conveniences. ……….

Chandler - suffered a stroke in 1966 and died shortly thereafter.

Red Book 1912 - G. de P. Colville [sic] - Naivasha

Gazette 5/4/2938 - Honorary Game Warden

Gazette - 3/12/1919 - Register of Voters - Rift Valley Area - G. de P. Colvile - Farmer - Gilgil

Mischief - He used to drive a car with a Masai moran carrying a spear in the front seat.

Gazette 13 Sep 1966 probate