Outspan Hotel

View toward Mount Kenya from the Outspan Hotel in 1936

The Outspan Hotel is in Nyeri, Kenya. It was built up from an old farm by Eric Sherbrooke Walker in the 1920s.

Walker had purchased approximately 70 acres (28 ha) of Crown Land in Nyeri and, in 1928, opened the Outspan Hotel, overlooking the gorge of a river in the Aberdare Range.[1] In 1932, he opened the adjunct Treetops Hotel as a night-viewing station for wildlife. Treetops is approximately 15 kilometres away in the Aberdare National Park. These business ventures may well have been based on profits made during his bootlegging days in America.[2]

In 1938, his former employer Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell and his wife Olave Baden-Powell retired to the Outspan Hotel (Baden-Powell once remarked "closer to Nyeri, closer to bliss"). He bought a share of Walker's hotel business to pay for his one-room cottage (named Paxtu and now home to a Scouting museum) in the hotel grounds.[3] Baden-Powell died on 8 January 1941 and is buried at St Peter's Cemetery in Nyeri.[4]

The hunter Jim Corbett also lived there.[5]

References

  1. ↑ Prickett, R.J (1995). Treetops: Story of A World Famous Hotel. Nairn, Scotland: David St John Thomas Publishers. ISBN 0-7153-9020-1.
  2. ↑ "The Peerage". 4 March 2011. p. 7609. Retrieved 29 June 2012.
  3. ↑ "Why did Baden Powell choose Nyeri, Kenya as his last home?". Scouts. World Organization of the Scout Movement. 24 January 2014. Archived from the original on 5 June 2016. Retrieved 24 July 2016.
  4. ↑ ""B-P" – Chief Scout of the World". Baden-Powell. World Organization of the Scout Movement. Archived from the original on 30 September 2007.
  5. ↑ Walker, Eric Sherbrooke (1962). Treetops Hotel. London: Robert Hale Publishing.

Coordinates: 0°25′15″S 36°56′30″E / 0.4209°S 36.9418°E / -0.4209; 36.9418


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