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.
