St Paul's Kipkelion - Carolyn Gurney Buxton / (beloved daughter of) / Samuel Gurney (Buxton) / Catton Hall, (Norfolk) / born June 18th 1875 / and was resident in / this Colony of Kenya / from 1913 till her / death on July 28th 1936 she was loved and respected / by all who knew her

Cara - 1910 - descended from Cairo and travelled all the way up the White Nile, and so to the Victoria Nyanza. ..... 1911 - she made an expedition into the Soudan and thence to Abyssinia. ........ 1912 - she ascended from Cape Town to Blantyre - to Nyasaland - to GEA - Mwanza to Kisumu - to the Coast. Painted a series of water colours. ....... In October 1912 she came back to England having bought a farm at Kericho, where Arthur Barclay and a Mr Martin had settlements also. Returned to EA in about August 1913. ........ The fellow-settlers are rather boring. The husbands dirty - the wives domestic. ........... 1914 - ...... My horse goes very well hunting, but vilely hacking. Now we hunt two or three days every week. I lost my coat at Mervyn Ridley's - my sole mackintosh, with the result that I am always wet through. ........ July 1914 - to Entebbe - Dinner parties every night and lots of bridge. Bed at anything between 12 and 1, instead of between 8 and 9 as at Kericho ...... Now off to dine with the Governor (an odious man though friendly) [Sir F. Jackson!] ..... Aug 1914 - I stayed at a place near Kisumu to meet George Buxton. Such a dear boy and so nice looking. He met me at the boat and took me up the 18 miles to the mission where he is. ........... we have great ideas now of making a hotel for Lumbwa, indeed we are full of plans .... I shall come out at the end of 10 years either a man or a mouse. ......... everyone away fighting .... I have 3 farms to look after. .... Cara was in England during the summer and autumn of 1915 and then returned to Kenya. She got ptomaine poisoning on her journey up the country and was desperately ill in hospital, but eventually recovered and returned to Kericho. ...... 1916 - on my way to Uganda with Phyllis Buxton ...... she has brought a Miss Campbell with her ........ We stayed with our governor in Nairobi. I did like a nice house with real drains again! and we played bridge every night and looked at hospitals all day ....... We have the Governor's railway carriage so travelling is most comfortable and I do love having a Buxton again to talk to. ....... I have 'gone and done it' and bought a 5,000 acre farm about 30 miles from here. I dont want it but it was going so awfully cheap (10/- and acre) and I know I can get far more directly the War is over. ...... Oct. 1917 - Masai Country - '.... I am on safari again now. This time seeing about Arthur's "shops". It is unlucky that the two far ones are 98 miles from Kericho and a very bad road! However I haven't done badly as I got down by 10 am. on the fourth day since leaving home. I brought the whole safari riding, even the boys as they could not otherwise have kept up. I have to go on to the Govt. station about 15 miles away to-morrow as I am opening a new store ....... I didn't very much like coming, for as you know, Arthur has been badly wounded and has a broken thigh, but I couldn't put it off ..... he is in such a horrid place - Kilwa - so unhealthy, and Germans far too close to be pleasant ...... I am delighted with the "shops", they are doing well and, after paying all expenses and allowing for a good many thefts, which are impossible to prevent as I come so seldom, they should clear about £200 a year, and this rather bucks me as I feel my work is not really all wasted. The chief profits are in hides ..... the 11 cattle skins that I got this morning by swopping beads and spears for, will all go to England and perhaps you may wear boots made of them! You see, to get heaps of skins and to get them cheap you must go and trade among a purely pastoral people who have millions of head of cattle. This is what these Masai are in whose country I now am. I cart the skins to the station at Lumbwa (about 116 miles). Then they go by rail to Mombasa and from there - even tho' we may not export our coffee - the hides are given shipping room at once as they are wanted so badly for leather goods in England. It does make the work more interesting. ....... 1917 - for the moment it is waging war on porcupines. They are such brutes as they are so 'hard' they press through any fence and then eat all the crops. When one catches them in traps they make such a weird rattling noise with their quills. But there are such thousands of them that catching 2 or 3 make no difference. ........ to S. Africa to see Arthur Barclay in hospital. ............ June 1918 - My great excitement is hearing of the sale of the first lot of coffee. This I harvested on Arthur's and George Gough's farm in 1916, so it has taken a good long time getting back. I first heard I had got £80 per ton for it, but yesterday came a letter from the agent saying it was £100 per ton. .......... One has, of course, to think of the many years of paying out money for labour before we get this return, but as George Gough and Arthur Barclay have both been maimed for life it is extra nice to feel they have done so well ....... 1926 - safari to Lake Nyasa with George Gough. 1933 - Travel to England on seaplane "Horsa". 1935/36 Safari to the Belgian Congo. ........…..  

Obituary - Miss Cara Buxton - One of "Old Guard" of Kenya Settlers - Loss to Lumbwa - Kenya has suffered grievous loss by the death, which took place at the Nakuru Memorial Hospital yesterday, of Miss Cara Buxton, of Kedowa, Londiani. She had been in ill-health for some time and had been ordered to Mombasa for 2 months by her doctor. The doctor had decided that she should fly to get down to sea level more quickly, but shortly before starting the journey she became ill and died within 48 hours of admittance to the hospital. Miss Buxton, who was 61 years of age, first visited the country on a shooting expedition in 1910 and a few years later came out as a settler. She originally took up land at Kericho, but settled at Lumbwa in 1920 and resided there ever since. She was a sister of the late Mr Edward G. Buxton of Catton Hall, Norwich, a former director of Barclays Bank, and took a very great interest in all public life in the Lumbwa district and played a leading part in establishing the district nursing scheme. She was a woman who displayed marked sympathy with the general outlook of the younger generation and was nearly always surrounded by young people. ........ Interest in African ..... She had also great sympathy for the African, and took a very strong interest in problems of Native development and education, and on more than one occasion arranged for the training of natives at the Jeanes school. One of the old guard of women settlers in Kenya, with the affairs of the country at heart, her death will leave a gap in the now depleted ranks which it will be very difficult to fill. She was of very strong character, and was greatly beloved in her particular district, where she was a familiar figure and held in the highest possible regard. She was remarkable for her energy and vivacity, and her youthful mentality, and few women of her age had so many young friends. - Church Supporter - Miss Buxton was a very staunch supporter of the Church in her area. She had a vigorous mind and strong views, and was never prepared to compromise with her principles. Nevertheless, she was of very liberal outlook. The Buxton family was one of the oldest and most respected of the Norfolk county families, and Miss Buxton was the aunt of Mr Hubert Buxton, who, largely due to his aunt's encouragement, settled in Kenya in 1923 and has since been farming at Njoro. She will be mourned by a host of friends in addition to her several relatives in Kenya, among whom are Major Clarence Buxton, the DC at Narok, Major Geoffrey Buxton of the Kinangop, and Mr Hugo Gurney. The funeral took place on Friday afternoon at Lumbwa, in the cemetary of the church in which she had taken such a great interest. - EA Standard - 3rd August 1936

Letter from John Carnegie - 'We knew Cara Buxton, who came from Norfolk, lived on a small farm near Kedowa station, managed my father's farm in 1913 while he went to Scotland to marry my mother.

Tobina Cole writes - Cara was a very special person. We always went to her for Christmas. ....... so typical that her parents would not allow her to go by ship to Cairo without a maid to chaperone her, who then returned to Norfolk on the ship leaving Cara to her adventures. She was small, quick moving. She wore holland dresses with a leather belt with silver buckle with keys on the loop at the side. A toupee (sic) of thick cork was head gear. She was so good to all, to every child and all Africans. I remember her farm school very well and helping her teach African women to knit and sew.

Pembroke - mentioned by Rev William Pryor, a master at Pembroke House from 1963-65 - 'Then there was Uncle Hubert at Kedowa who's Kenya Weekly News had got us the job. His aunt Cara Buxton had driven up from the Cape with a half-span of oxen to meet the house (prefabricated) she had sent out from Norwich Thorpe to Kedowa Station. That was at the turn of the century. The railway was part of 'Buxton Policy' to undermine the Ugandan slave trade.'

Pioneers - Londiani & Mau Summit - Cara Buxton came out early in the century as a missionary [?], rode to Uganda on a mule and subsequently settled at Kedowa, where she virtually adopted the Kipsigis tribe wholesale and flatly refused to allow those in her employ to be punished for any misdemeanour, even when caught red-handed with stolen cattle. She was deeply imbued with East African history and its romance. 'She made me feel', wrote a neighbour, 'that I was Speke and Grant rolled into one and that with every step on the way from Londiani to the Mountains of the Moon I was walking through history.' Her nephew, Hubert Buxton, inherited her farm and his grand-daughters were living in Kericho in 1967 - 4 generations of the family.

Nicholls - WW1 - Cara Buxton, owner of the farm Kipsaas, near Kericho on the Lumbwa road, worked particularly hard. She supervised several properties, travelling from farm to farm accompanied by a single African, 2 mules with bulky saddlebags holding the wages in rupees for all the farms' staff, and a sack containing her belongings. She must have lived in great discomfort. One day she found herself making a coffin and burying the post master who also ran the hotel - 'somehow that kind of thing one never has anything to do with in England'. She kept Arthur Barclay's farm and shops running and even opened 2 new stores for him, trading in flour, honey and blankets for Maasai skins which she railed to Mombasa for leather exports to Europe. Foster has - died 1944 ?

Hut - BEADOC - Cara Buxton had several teams of oxen, and did the transport for Beadoc between railhead at Lumbwa and Kericho. The surveyed railway line from Lumbwa to Sotik never materialised, and so later Kericho was given the first up-country tarmac road. The alignment of this road from Kericho to Lumbwa followed Cara Buxton's old ox wagon track, and there were 115 bends in the 22 miles!'

Rift Valley - Member of the Rift Valley Sports Club - Jan 1929 - Elected - 20 Sep 1927

Gazette - 20/7/1921 - Register of Voters - Lake Area - Miss Clara [sic] Gurney Buxton - Spinster - Lumbwa

Red Book 1919 - Miss C. Buxton - Kipsaas - Kericho

Bovill - Pioneer in tea.

Hut - walked Cairo - Nairobi, Rode mule to Kampala, Ox wagon transport Lumbwa