The Hoey House - 1957

After spending the summer holidays of 1956 in England we were desperate to return to Mombasa in 1957 - but we had moved, off Mombasa island to the Nyali Estate along the coast to the north. My father had been promoted but the African Mercantile manager's house in Cliff Avenue needed extensive repairs so we had to make do with a rented house - but what a house!

It had been built by a 'white hunter', Cecil Hoey (more about him here). It was on a large plot by the sea, built in a slight curve with all the rooms facing onto a veranda, from which....

....the view looked across a lawn with scattered palm trees beyond which lay a white-sand beach and the sea; and beyond the beach lay a lagoon protected, two miles out, by a coral reef. For two small boys, this was paradise. The calm beauty of the place even seemed to affect my father, who was never normally willing to mow a lawn, let alone try to repair the mower.

All Richard and I wanted to do was to spend our time on the beach. No-one else bothered us on it. At high tide the waves could be fierce but we swam in them, or sat in our rubber inner tubes and bounced across them, and low tide exposed miles of rock pools filled with sea creatures. We collected shells. We walked along the high tide line picking up exotic flotsam from across the ocean. We made boats out of coconut husks and crewed them with hermit crabs. It was as much as our mother could do to persuade us to come indoors to eat and sleep.

We certainly didn't want to spend time in town, and seeing friends seemed much less important than getting out onto the beach. We did some of the usual things, like visit Tsavo East game park, but we didn't go to the Chini Club or Swimming Club as much - we didn't need to. Even Tsavo wasn't as wonderful as usual: a herd of buffalo came visiting the Hoey House, and green monkeys were often in the trees.

We gathered for sundowners on the veranda and watched the yellow weaver birds come to the bird bath. After supper we retired to bedrooms which opened on to the veranda, and slept with the doors open so we could hear the sea: there was a night watchman, who had been Hoey's gun bearer. He was armed with a wicked-looking, curved sword but he slept peacefully on a couch at the end of the veranda.

It was a wonderful holiday, which made the idea of returning to England even more horrible. I remember Richard and I sitting with our parents on the curved section of veranda which can be seen in the picture behind my father begging them not to send us back. Our pleas and tears made no difference. When it came to it we packed our suitcases, climbed meekly into the car and left this beautiful house.