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Name: SAYER, Douglas James William
Photo Source: Michael Sayer
Nee: son of James Arthur Sayer
Birth Date: 8 May 1906 Sparham, Norfolk
Death Date: 17 Apr 2005 Sparham
First Date: 1930
Last Date: 1936
Profession: Farmer
Area: Gilgil
Married: In Lyng, Norfolk 24 Apr 1946 Mary Elizabeth Weddall b. 10 Mar 1924 Lyng, Norfolk
Children: Michael John (11 Oct 1947 Sparham); Charles James Weddall (4 May 1952 Sparham)
Book Reference: Red 31, Gilgil
War Service: Royal Norfolk Regt.
General Information:
Michael Sayer (son): Douglas James William Sayer, elder son of Capt James Sayer, JP of Sparham Hall, and Georgiana Margaret née Garrod, was born at Sparham on 8 May 1906. After his father returned from the First World War, having served in Gallipoli and Egypt, he was sent away to school at Aldenham, with a Norfolk housemaster, Edmund Beevor, who would appear on Saturdays in plus fours and take the boys to act as beaters on a day's shooting.
His father James Arthur Sayer, Sir John Ramsden and Major Ivor (Toby) Buxton, DSO were all officers in the Norfolk Yeomanry and James Arthur and Toby Buxton at one point shared a tent in theGallipoli campaign. This was how Douglas James came to go out to Kenya, working for Sir John Ramsden, to whom Toby Buxton was (in effect) land agent until 1934.
In 1929 Sayer went to Kenya on the Mariana with Hartley Frazer-Allen, whose father has been rector of the adjoining perish of Lyng. The voyage lasted 15 March – 12 April. For a start he worked on Sir John Ramsden’s estate at Kipipiri, and ran it under Toby Buxton (who spent two nights a week at Kipipiri, he and the Ramsdens living mainly at Marula, by Lake Naivasha). In 1932 he made a visit home with Edward St Maur and on his return bought Ol Gojera in the Aberdares in partnership with Hartley Frazer-Allen (1933). This was originally 1,600 acres bought at 35 shillings/acres which they gradually extended to 2.801 acres. In 1942, Hartley Frazer-Allen died of burns after a tin of paraffin caught fire when a tractor which was being started backfired. Hartley had married Mabel, stepdaughter and adopted daughter of Charles Osborne Ellis and after his death she remarried Robert Morgan-Grenville, who had the farm to the south. In 1950, in order to buy adjoining land in Norfolk, Sayer agreed with Mabel to terminate the Ol Gojera partnership and Mabel bought out Sayer (30 March 1950). Sayer was guardian to David Frazer-Allen, who was sent to school in England at Tabley.
He enjoyed the shooting, mostly duck and snipe, sometimes sandgrouse, and a variety of antelope whose heads later went to England, with friends such as Charles Corbett and Edward and Freddie St Maur. Such activities could end in a 17-mile walk home back to Kipipiri after Toby Buxton got the car stuck, or being surprised by a rhino behind an anthill when following a gazelle. On a different occasion, the African employees reported to him and his friend Freddie St Maur the presence of a lion which had been marauding the livestock. It went into a thornbush and the lion-dog walked round the bush growling. DJWS told the African to throw in a stone, and the lion leapt out. He and St Maur both missed it at point blank range. He also whipped-in for David Leslie-Melville’s jackal hounds.
In 1936 he returned to England to take over the estate at Sparham, and to farm in Norfolk but he continued in 5th Battalion, Royal Norfolk Regiment. As staff captain in 1940 it was his task to conduct Churchill on an inspection of the Norfolk coastal defences. An attachment to Baron John de Rutzen’s company in the Welsh Guards saved him from being in Singapore with the 4th Norfolks in 1942. This was followed by six months at the Staff College and then a Combined Ops Course in Scotland. Subsequently he was posted to the Middle East and Palestine under the command of Martin Charteris, (later Private Secretary to the Queen), and finished the war as (acting) Lt. Colonel, retiring as Major. At this time he was appointed MBE (military division, 1941) and TD.
After the war, he returned to Norfolk and married in 1946 Mary Elizabeth, youngest daughter of Revd Edward Weddall, Rector of the adjoining parish of Lyng and Rural Dean of Sparham. He served on the Mitford and Launditch Rural District Council and River Wensum Internal Drainage Board, and on the Norfolk committee of the Country Landowners' Association (he was branch chairman in 1957). For 40 years, from 1946 to 1986, he was churchwarden of Sparham. He was president of the local branch of the British Legion from 1960 to 1984, a General Commissioner of Inland Revenue, and a foundation manager of the Red House approved school. The public service closest to his heart was as a magistrate on the Reepham Bench, where he joined his father at the end of the war and served as its final chairman until its amalgamation in 1975.
He had a deep interest in natural history and birds, in family history, and Norfolk books, which he communicated enthusiastically to his family and friends. He had a great love of trees, which he began planting at the age of 17 and was still planting and pruning into his 90s. He was an occasional contributor to the Quarterly Journal of Forestry, a keen measurer of oaks and, from 1946, of daily rainfall, thereby enabling the estate to monitor the increasingly evident onset of climate change in the 1990’s. He was still at 96 supervising the high pruning of a lime avenue planted five and a half decades earlier.