Update re Joyce Amphlett

Researcher/historian Phil Dawes found out more about Joyce Amphlett:

 

"As you know, Marian Joyce was the daughter of a wealthy farmer. She was educated at home in 1901 and 1911. The house in which the family lived in 1911 had 4 servants and 16 rooms.

Joyce married Harold Mence Gardner at Upton (Malvern) in 1920. Her sister married in 1921.

She became elusive after that. As her husband was a forestry student ( he too was the son of a wealthy local farmer) I thought they might have gone abroad and they did: to Kenya. Harold worked his way up the Colonial Civil Service ladder to become Conservator of Forests, Kenya by 1938.  He was also appointed to the legislative council in 1933.

Harold was already in Kenya as a young forestry officer when WWI broke out. He fought in the East Africa campaign but became ill from malaria and returned to forestry.

After the war he must have returned home often enough to meet up with local girl Joyce.

They were on holiday in the UK in 1939 at census time. Harold was staying with her parents - several servants were listed. Joyce was almost certainly there too but her record is 'officially closed' for some reason.

They were good Christians and helped to found and build St. Francis Church in Nairobi. This is explained on their remembrance plaque in that church.

When Harold died in 1979 the “Nairobi Standard” newspaper published a fairly lengthy biography. It mentions Joyce and their five surviving children and fifteen grandchildren.

Joyce died in 1985."

And Steve Millward has found a reference to one of their children - Charles Amphlett Gardner - being made a District Officer in Fort Hall, Kenya on 14th July 1959.