Eric Sherbrooke Walker
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Major Eric Sherbrooke Walker, MC (approx 1890-approx 1970) was a famous hotelier and founder of the famous Outspan Hotel and Treetops Hotel in Kenya, as well as being a British Army major. He is remembered as the host of Elizabeth II and Prince Philip when they visited the Treetops in 1952, receiving news of the death of George VI and Elizabeth II's accession in Kenya in the process.
[edit] Early life
Son of a minister, Eric Walker was brought up in March, Cambridgeshire and educated at Oxford University. Walker was associated with the Scouting movement, and was a personal secretary to Baden-Powell, the founder of the movement. He was one of the first two Scout inspectors, overseeing all of Wales and the South of England. He was present at Baden-Powell's first Scout camp in Humshaugh in 1908, and toured Canada with 16 Scouts in 1910 to demonstrate Scouting.[1]
Walker joined the Royal Flying Corps during World War I in 1914. He was held as a prisoner of war in Germany, but a German girlfriend from before the war helped him escape by supplying him with wire cutters provided by Baden-Powell hidden inside a piece of ham. He also saw service in Crimea, fighting for the White Army against the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War. He returned to England after the war, and became engaged and ultimately married to Lady Bettie Feilding , the daughter of Rudolph Feilding, 9th Earl of Denbigh, on July 26, 1926.[1]
Needing money for the marriage, he ran a bootlegging business, smuggling liquor into America during the Prohibition era, while his fiance Lady Bettie worked as social secretary in the British embassy in Washington DC. However, Walker shot and wounded a corrupt state trooper when he tried to steal Walker's cache of whiskey, resulting in the couple fleeing to Canada. Walker later wrote The Confessions of a Rum-Runner under the pseudonym of James Barbican about his life during this period.[2]
[edit] Life in Kenya
The couple finally emigrated to Kenya, where Walker purchased a farm near Nyeri and opened the Outspan Hotel in the Aberdare Range (near the present day Aberdare National Park) in 1928. In 1932, he opened the adjunct Treetops Hotel as a night-viewing station for wildlife. Most of these business ventures were based on profits made during his bootlegging days in America. He again served in the military during World War II, enlisting in the Royal Air Force. He served in the North African campaign, narrowly avoiding capture in the Western Desert in the Sahara.[1]
He was host to Princess Elizabeth and her consort Prince Philip, during their 1952 Kenya trip at the Treetops. The Treetops Hotel was reinforced and expanded for the visit of the princess. The night the princess spent on Treetops was her night of accession to the throne of England, when her father George VI died in his sleep (February 6, 1952). However, the princess received the news of death later at the Royal Lodge.[3]
Walker was again enlisted for military duty to quell the Mau Mau Uprising in the early 1950s. The Treetops was offered as a lookout point for the King's African Rifles, and was ultimately burnt down by the rebels on May 27, 1954 during the final days of the conflict. Walker rebuilt a bigger hotel at the same location in 1957, and business prospered following the media hype over the accession of Elizabeth II. His hotelling business was even featured on National Geographic Magazine, and famous celebrities like Charles Chaplin and Paul McCartney visited the hotel.[1] Walker also wrote a book about his life in Kenya and Treetops, named Treetops Hotel.[4]
His former employer Lord Baden-Powell retired to the Outspan Hotel (Baden-Powell once remarked "closer to Nyeri, closer to bliss"), bought a share of Walker's hotelling business to pay for his cottage (named Paxtu and now home to a Scouting museum) inside Walker's land, and died there in 1941. The famous hunter Jim Corbett moved to Kenya and became a resident hunter at the Treetops following the Independence of India. A house on the Walkers' farm was used during the shooting of the film version of Born Free.[1]
An avid hunter during his younger days, Walker, like many others, became an advocate of wildlife conservation in his final years in Kenya.
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d e Nicholas Best, The Man from Treetops, Andrew Lownie Literary Agency
- ^ James Barbican (pseudonym of Eric Walker), Confessions Of A Rum-Runner, 1927. Republished by the Flat Hummock Press, 2006 (ISBN 9780977372554)
- ^ Prickett, R.J "Treetops: Story of A World Famous Hotel," David St John Thomas Publishers, Nairn Scotland, 1995
- ^ E. S. Walker, Treetops Hotel, Robert Hale Publishing, London, 1962
