LOST LION OF THE EMPIRE

 The history of Colonel Ewart Grogan is a story of what a man can do for love –or what men could do  for love then . Ewart Scott Grogan was born in London in 1874. He fell in love with Gertrude watt, but her stepfather disapproved the match. To prove his worthiness in character and seriousness he commenced his expedition from Cape Town to Cairo at the age of 24, reaching Cairo in 1900, after two and a half years of travelling. To cap this success he married Gertrude. In 1904 Grogan hired the London architect, H. O. Cresswell and a firm of local Indian contractors to build his home in Kenya. “Chiromo” (meaning the joining of two rivers) named after the Nyasaland settlement at the junction of the Ruo and Shire rivers) was built on the site that Grogan bought from Bennet. Gertrude's Garden Children's Hospital located in Nairobi, Kenya was founded in 1947, with the donation of some land by Colonel Ewart Grogan, in memory of his wife. After his epic trip, Grogan returned to London in 1900 a celebrity. But Africa was in his blood and he soon returned, first serving in Lord Milner's 'Kindergarten', a elite group of young imperialists charged with reconstructing South Africa after the Boer War, then settling in British East Africa.