SE - E.B. Horne - DC Meru - Oct 1909

Golf - In 1918, as DC Kiambu, got the golf course going. He and Mr C.N. Day and Mr Jock Munro were responsible for the layout of the course. In 1910 he laid out a golf course at Meru where he was DC. He and his assistant DC were the only two golfers. A.C. Lyons constructed a new 9 hole golf course at Nyeri in 1925 with S.E. Parker. This was extended to 18 holes by E.B. Horne in 1934.  

Cobbold - Alone he came to the district and established himself among the wild unfriendly tribes, managing by his sheer personality to pacify them and even to form friendships with the chiefs. They assisted him to build his house, plant a garden, and even to make a Golf Course, but as golf remained a mystery to them, he must often have played with Bogey for partner. He was given the title of District Commissioner, and when the time arrived for him to leave he handed over to his successor one of the most orderly districts in the colony. A few years later 'Short Horn', the nickname by which he was generally known, on account of his short stature, entered the holy estate of matrimony. The ceremony, complete with the bride and her bridesmaid, the best man, the parson and a champagne reception, took place at Mkuyu, in a very primitive church built of sisal poles with a grass roof. Some years elapsed before the couple returned to England. When they applied for their passports, it was discovered that the church had never been licensed and they had to be remarried by the DC in Nairobi.  

Footprints - Meru - The DC, Horne by name, greeted us with the utmost cordiality, and offered us cool drinks ......... Horne was a little chap, dressed in flannels and a big slouch hat, carrying only a light rawhide whip, with very little of the dignity and "side" usually considered necessary in dealing with wild natives. The post at Meru had been established only 2 years ..... Horne's personal influence had won them over to positive friendliness. He had, moreover, done the entire construction work of the post itself. ........... "Now" said Horne cheerfully, "we'll have a game of golf". .......... Horne produced a sufficiency of clubs, and we sallied forth. Then came the surprise of our life. We played 18 holes - 18, mind you - over an excellently laid-out and kept-up course! The fair greens were cropped short and smooth by a well-managed small herd of sheep; the putting greens were rolled and in perfect order; bunkers had been located at the correct distances; there were water hazards in the proper spots. In short, it was a genuine, scientific, well kept golf course. Over it played Horne, solitary, except on the rare occasions when he and his assistant happened to be at the post at the same time. The nearest white man was 6 days' journey .......... We dined with Horne. His official residence was most interesting. The main room was very high to beams and a grass-thatched roof, with a well brushed earth floor covered with mats. It contained comfortable furniture, a small library, a good phonograph, tables, lamps, and the like ........... leopard skins and other trophies hung on the wall ....... He is a good man.

Tignor - PC Kikuyu Province in 1930-32. PC Ukamba in 1933   

Roosevelt - Meru - unfailing kindness of the Commissioner, Mr Horne ...... it is one of the prettiest spots in EA. We were more than hospitably received by the Commissioner, Mr Horne, who had been a cow-puncher in Wyoming for 7 years, so that naturally we had much in common. He had built the station himself, and had tamed the wild tribes around by mingled firmness and good treatment, and he was a mighty hunter, and helped us in every way. ...... While camped by the boma, white-necked vulturine ravens and black and white crows came familiarly around the tents. A young eland bull, quite as tame as a domestic cow, was picketed, now here, now there, about us. Horne was breaking it to drive in a cart.  

EAHB 1905 - Assistant Collector, EAP, April 21st 1904   

KAD 1922 - District and Resident Commissioner and Resident Magistrate, Meru

Kiambu Scrapbook - The Kiambu Club - 1913 - Another account says that the DC's wife Mrs Geoffrey Northcote, objected to these holes [golf course] being made in front of her house but the course does not appear to have been altered until 1918, under a different DC, E.B. Horne, who laid out 9 holes with the assistance of two settlers, Charles Day and Jock Munro. Two of these holes were made on what are now roads - the Kambui Road and the road running up from it to the Club and Boma - so either of these two roads did not exist at that time, or their alignment was different.

Advertiser - 12/6/1908 - Appointments - E.B. Horne - Acting DC Mweru from Embu

Dominion - 1930 - Nominated Official member of Legco

Dominion - Senior Provincial Commissioner, 1st Class - 1930

Nicholls - a station was opened at Meru, in 1908. The DC was the energetic E.B. Horne, known as 'Shorthorn' because he was the smaller of the two Horne brothers, both of them Government officials. He busied himself building irrigation ditches, roads and paths, houses, fences, and an 18 hole golf course with bunkers and water hazards. Explaining that it was easier to get caddies than golfballs, Horne stationed supernumerary caddies round the edge of the course whenever he could persuade a passing traveller to play. Horne lived in a two-storeyed house, the peak of Mt. Kenya visible behind and the Aberdare range in front, with a mud-floored hall 'in which a huge hatstand rose gauntly from a great pool of water'. In the dining room was an enormous mantelpiece supporting a Union Castle ship's funnel down which water poured when it rained. From the tall, Gothic roof, came the sound of millions of insects munching away at the timbers. 'One night, on opening our bedroom door,' said Madeleine de la Vie Platts, whose husband relieved Shorthorn when he went on leave, 'I found with flesh-creeping horror that my hand had rested for a moment on the black coils of a snake wound round and dangling from the handle.'

North - Appt. Asst. Collector EAP 30-4-1904; arr. Mombasa from England 21-5-1904

Witchmen - born in 1881, the youngest of 8 brothers, and came from a family distinguished for service to the empire. After receiving a conventional British education he had yielded to a sense of adventure. He spent several years in Canada and Wyoming, working as both a lumberjack and ranch hand. In Wyoming he acquired the name "Shorthorn", a reflection of his lack of height in contrast to a taller brother, nicknamed "Longhorn". Horne was a fanatical hunter, and it was big game that had lured him to Africa. Having entered the colonial service, he discovered in himself an unsuspected capacity for languages. In the course of his career he at least partially mastered Swahili, Gikuyu, Meru, Embu, Maasai, and Nandi. In Embu, Horne was known among Africans as 'Bwana Mdogo' (Mr Small), again because of his height.  …… [lots more on Horne's progress to Meru and his system of governance - page 134 seq.] [Horne's boma at Meru] …Horne shrugged off the warnings of his interpreters and began work, forcing Imenti warriors to clear the forested and cultivated sections with equal thoroughness and a fine disregard for either ancestral anger or previous property rights [!!]. The next step was to erect two Canadian-style log cabins, built in the manner he had learned as a lumberjack. These became his house and office. Thereafter, a line of grass and thatch huts was constructed, set in a permanent square in traditional British military style. Local warriors were then set to digging a six-foot trench, again in a square, around the complete encampment. Finally water from the neighbouring river was diverted into the square by means of trenches, and the headquarters was complete. Throughout the building period Imenti elders had waited eagerly for the first signs of ancestral retribution to strike the intruders, in the form of catastrophic illness. They were initially quite encouraged when Horne consistently refused his interpreter's please to placate the supernatural by sacrificing goats. However, calamity failed to strike in any form, a failure that deeply shook the elders' faith in their traditions and cast many into apathetic despair. Meanwhile, with their base complete, the invaders turned their attention to the construction of roads. That action brought them directly into conflict with the traditions of warriorhood. Horne's desire to create communication and supply routes back to his own administrative center can be understood, especially in view of his exposed military position. In full agreement the colonial administration had called for the simultaneous construction of a roadbed ten feet wide, to run from Embu through each of the Meru regions, pass through Horne's encampment, and extend 30 miles beyond into Tigania. Eventually it would extend northward to include the Nyambeni Mountains (Igembe) and east around Mount Kenya into Gikuyu. The "simultaneous" element was to occur through the coercion of every African community along the route to undertake its construction. ……… [lots more on Horne's administration] Horne's first 5 years in Meru were spent virtually alone; he was assisted only by the two British officers commanding his multitribal force of the KAR, as well as a single Gikuyu translator. During this period he made great efforts to absorb Meru culture. Informants gleefully declare, for example, that 'Kangangi  spent much time courting Meru girls.' In fact he often accepted gifts of food from unmarried women he had hired to labor on his own expanding compound and joined on occasion in the dances of 'his' (warrior) age-set. From the Meru perspective accepting food from a woman's hands and dancing among warriors were both acts intended to provide a symbolic beginning to courtship. Evidently, those who saw 'Kangangi' engage in the initial stages assumed he would complete the rituals over time. In 1912 Horne went briefly on leave. He was temporarily replaced by W.A.F. Platts as acting district commissioner and no less than five assistant district officers, none of whom had experience in the region. Three of these remained to assist Horne upon his return in mid-1913. 

Red Book 1912 - E.B. Horne - Meru - Kenya Province - DC at Meru

Nellie - D.C. Threw a great party for Nellie & Jos Grant and the Hodgkinson's safari and polo on the golf course!

HBEA 1912 DC Meru. President of Nyeri Golf Club in 1933. Captain of Nyeri Golf Club in 1933.

EAHB 1905 - Asst. Collector, Naivasha

His wife was winner of Pease Cup, Ladies' Club Championship, Nyeri in 1933

1939 England and Wales Register living in New Forest with wife