Arthur Graham of Great Ambrook - 150th anniversary
Arthur Graham, born in Tulse Hill, Surrey on 29th July 1871, was the owner of Great Ambrook and the creator of the Italian Garden. He was a man of independent means, born into a wealthy colonial trading family on his mother’s side, and was the youngest of 8 siblings. He must have had an unusual childhood, as his mother divorced his father when he was aged just 4 and he had a very fragile constitution all his life.
He went to Oxford in 1891 and it’s possible that through some South Devon connections made during his time there he found the Great Ambrook estate aged 28, initially leasing it in 1899. He was gay, at a time when to be so overtly risked prison, and the privacy of a remote South Devon estate was no doubt a consideration in his decision.
From the accounts we have, Arthur was a sociable, respectful and generous character and in his mid-thirties, now the owner of the 275-acre Great Ambrook estate, he embarked on significant improvement works. As well as the Italian Garden, he built a vast double-height extension to the house as big as a ballroom (although it was discreetly called the music room!). These two additions must have made Great Ambrook a very special place to entertain.
Arthur left little trace of his social circle, but we do know that he moved in at least one group of aesthetes, that recorded by the contemporary author Frederick Rolfe. In one book Arthur appears, thinly disguised as the charming and wealthy Captain Theophanes Proudfoot, owner of the idyllic secluded estate Sonorusciello.
Arthur died in January 1928 aged only 56, leaving £88,000 (worth £5.7M today) and his obituary in the Devon and Exeter Gazette emphasized his contributions to the local community. While characterising him as open to any good cause, his generosity was focused on what today we call education, health and well-being. In the words of the Gazette at the time, his focus was on “organisations engaged in the preparation of the youth of the country for good citizenship, as well as hospitals” along with “those men of Ipplepen who went to the front” in the First World War, writing to them, entertaining them on leave and helping them through the post-war hardships many endured. The bearers at his funeral were ex-servicemen.
80 people and 5 charities received bequests in Arthur’s will - he left £5,000 (£322,000 in today’s money) and an annuity of £300 (£19,000 in today’s money) to his servant and head gardener, Roy Langworthy Clements, “in return for his devoted and honourable service… to buy and stock a farm”. He also left generous bequests to the Goodman family, having paid for the education of two of the sons through high school and Oxford University, after meeting the young Harold Goodman selling papers on his regular train journeys to London.
If Arthur was a generous man, he was also a private one. As his obituary emphasised, he was “strongly averse to the publication of his beneficent acts”, and on his death he instructed that his personal photographs, letters and papers be destroyed. Nonetheless he might have quietly appreciated the obituary’s conclusion that beyond his generosity “his charming personality endeared him to all”.
Photo courtesy of Sarah Le Breton.
“His charming personality endeared him to all”