The most interesting of the Gilbey brothers is Walter. They were all good businessmen and philanthropic but Walter had a deeper hinterland.
“In 1858, the year after his return from the Crimean War, Walter had married Ellen Parish, the fourth daughter of the landlord of the White Horse Inn at North Street, and soon after moved to London so that he could be close to his business. They stayed there for seven years and in the course of their marriage raised a family of eight children – four boys and four girls.
With his business and prosperity going from strength to strength, Walter took out a lease on Hargrave House, Stansted, in 1864 then soon after turned his attention to other pursuits in the world of business and leisure.
In 1868 he bought the title of Lord of the Manor of Bishop’s Stortford from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, which included the manorial rights and approximately 950 acres of land. When the lease expired on Hargrave House in 1874 he moved to Brighton but returned a few years later to take out a lease on Elsenham Hall – a large, elegant Georgian mansion near Stansted.
He was a sportsman as well as a lover of horses and during the 1880s was president of at least three equine societies including the Shire Horse Society (of which he was one of the founders), and the Hunters Improvement Society. He also co-founded the London Harness Horse Parade, became a governor of the Royal Veterinary College, and in 1896 was made president of the Royal Agricultural Society. His extensive knowledge of horses led him to write many books on the subject.
Never one to sit on his laurels, Walter entered into another venture in 1889 by starting his own fruit growing and preserving business on his Elsenham estate: his motive being to prove that fruit could be successfully grown in Essex as well as in Kent and other southern counties. The jam factory at Elsenham began operations in 1893, the same year he received a baronetcy for his services to horse breeding and agriculture.
In 1895 he gave land in Rye Street on which the town’s first hospital was built and, on part of the 950 acres acquired from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, created Hockerill Park Estate and the town’s golf course.
A regular visitor to Elsenham Hall and to his stables near Elsenham Station was the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, with whom Walter formed a close friendship. After the death of his beloved wife in 1896 he built in her memory a gilded dome over a well in Elsenham and paid for construction of almshouses in South Street, Bishop’s Stortford. These he named King’s Cottages in recognition of his association with royalty. He also bought the Stort Navigation in 1898 in an effort to keep it open for the benefit of the town, but finally had to sell it in 1905 at great financial loss to himself.
By 1907 his estate at Elsenham was producing all kinds of fruit, although the fruit and jam business was not profitable at that time. He later experimented with the growing of lavender and mint and continued to write books on horses, carriages, hounds and even poultry, as well as writing innumerable newspaper and magazine articles. He also became a justice of the peace and Deputy Lieutenant of Essex.
Part of his manorial lands purchased in 1868 included the old town mill in Bridge Street. This was demolished in 1895, and in 1911 he gave the land on which it had stood to the town. When he died on 12 November 1914, aged 83, he was buried alongside his wife in New Cemetery, Apton Road.”
(Extracted from Stortford History)
A good man. Thank you for this resume of Walter.
Not forgetting Walter’s nephew, Monsignor Alfred Gilbey, the longest serving Catholic chaplain at Cambridge University 1932-65, who spent his latter years in permanent residence at The Travellers Club Pall Mall and is commemorated by a portrait in the lobby.