insideKENT Magazine Issue 92 - November 2019 | Page 167

From a childhood at the wonderful Ightham Mote,
a young adulthood serving in the East Kent Regiment
at Dunkirk and through latter years of dedicated
service to British Rail; the modest, unassuming
philanthropist Colyer-Fergusson has always expressed
commitment to his Kentish roots.
Sir James was born in 1917, the only child of Max
Christian Hamilton Colyer-Fergusson and Edith
Jane Miller. The Colyer-Fergusson Baronetcy was
created in 18 66 for his great-great-grandfather,
Scottish surgeon William Fergusson. Later
that century, the family moved South where James’s
grandfather, the 3rd Baronet, served as High
Sheriff of Kent.
James’s mother Edith was from farther afield.
Born in 1875 in Portage la Prairie, a small city in
Manitoba, Canada, she studied at the Winnipeg
Conservatory of Music. After graduating as an
outstanding student in voice and piano, she became
an international star known fondly as the ‘Manitoba
Nightingale’. England beckoned and she was invited
to perform for King Edward VII and, in 1911,
chosen to represent Canada at the Imperial Festival
Concert at Crystal Place. Edith married Max in
1913, the same week that she appeared in grand
opera, singing Gilda in Rigoletto. Educated at
Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford, James inherited
his mother’s deep love of music.
As a boy James lived at Ightham Mote, a house
described by writer John Newman as "the most
complete small medieval manor house in the
country". His childhood was a time of carefree
happiness, growing up alongside his cousins in the
Kent countryside, playing billiards in the manor
house and fishing out of the windows into the moat.
Sadly, his mother died not long after his nineteenth
birthday, and at 23 he enlisted as a captain in the
East Kent Regiment. James was captured at Dunkirk
right at the start of the war and held prisoner for its
duration. He rarely spoke of this time, but the bonds
he made were for life. Lady Marianna Monckton,
married to his cousin and one of his dearest friends,
said he sometimes made veiled comments about his
time as a prisoner of war: “So and so is coming to
stay for a couple of nights… we were in it together”.
In the same year that James was taken prisoner his
father was killed in a bombing raid on an army
driving school near Tidworth. After the war, James
returned to Ightham Mote having lost both his
mother and father and, upon his grandfather’s death
in 1951, the baronetcy and the manor house passed
to him. But he found that he could not afford the
upkeep and repair of this substantial property
and was forced to sell. It was suggested that it be
divided into flats or demolished to realise the
value of the lead on the roofs. Keen to avoid this,
James managed to structure a sale to three local
businessmen, William Durling, John Goodwin and
John Baldock. In 1953 this syndicate sold the house
to Charles Henry Robinson, of Portland, Maine,
who ensured that urgent repairs were undertaken
and ultimately gave the house and its contents to
the National Trust after his death in 1985. James
and Charles became lifelong friends.
James’s working life was spent in railways, becoming
Passenger Officer to the South East Division of
British Rail’s Southern Region, and later
Parliamentary and Public Correspondent to the
British Rail Board. He was passionate about trains
and their timetables and travelled everywhere by
rail if he possibly could.
James also inherited significant land in Kent and
when much of it was compulsorily purchased, his
close friends say he found himself an “embarrassed
millionaire”, “quite thrown by it”. James was
passionate about Kent, its people and its churches.
His inheritance of family estates allowed him to
establish a charitable trust fifty years ago this year,
to make grants to support the communities he loved.
Over the years the Trust has made grants to support
a wide range of projects, with the overarching aim
of improving the lives of the people of Kent,
particularly those at the margins of society.
After a short illness James died on the 9th January
2004. He was an extremely modest man who never
sought profile or publicity for his philanthropy but,
through the work of the charity, his name lives on
as a fitting and permanent memorial to his generosity
and philanthropy.
www.cfct.org.uk
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