McMillan Castle

A few steps from Kilimambogo Hills in Kangundo lies one of the monuments of colonial heritage. Villagers working near one of the farms or those whiling time away in the nearby tree shades seem oblivious of the edifice’s significance. The house shaped like the mountain on which it lies near perhaps represents the mind of its builder, William Northrup McMillan. McMillan, an American farmer turned British army admirer, put up the house more than 100 years ago when he arrived in Kenya. Each of the 16 bedrooms tells a story of the builder, whose famous guests included the 26th American President Theodore Roosevelt and British war time Prime Minister Winston Churchill. McMillan was born to illiterate and poor parents, but he built one of the biggest empires while in Kenya. Curiously, the secrets of the house have been kept from the public for the last 100 years. Neither the City Council of Nairobi nor the National Museums of Kenya - keepers of the country’s history - knew anything about the house with magnificent medieval architecture. The ceiling of the house is made of expensive oak imported from Scandinavia and it was also designed and built by Scandinavian architects. Museums officials say the Government only ‘discovered’ the house, which is a few kilometers from Nairobi, last year.

A farmer cooperative, Muka Mukuu, has been using the house for its activities. However, the site was gazette and put under protection through the Monuments and Antiques Act in December last year. This means that whoever owns it cannot make any changes to its core structure without the authority of the National museums of Kenya. The exact date when the famed…and philanthropist built the castle is not documented although it is said to have been at the beginning of the 20th Century. McMillan first came to Africa in 1901 as a traveler and settled in Kenya in 1905 after acquiring the 33,000 acres of land at Ol Donyo Sabuk.

 

MEETING POINT FOR THE GREATS

The house has a secret expansive bunker with underground pathways, which stretch from nearly a kilometer from the front gates to the face of a hill at the back of the house. The house serves as a meeting point for the white settlers in Kenya, where governance and security issues were discussed.

 

According to a caretaker at the sire, Mr. John Musembi, Roosevelt and Churchill were among the house’s important guests. Roosevelt, who died in 1919, was US President from 1901 to 1909 while Churchill who died in 1965 served Britain from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955.

 

According to a Kenya Wildlife Service website, Roosevelt stayed at McMillan’s Juja farm in 1909 while on a safari to Kenya. During the Mau Mau uprising, several British settlers came to the spouse for refuge especially after the slaying of a white settler farmer and his family on January 26, 1953 and the start of a full-scale civil war.

 

“Sir Evelyn Baring (Colonial Kenya governor- General) came to hide here in 1954 at the height of the Mau Mau rebellion,” says Musembi, who is the Administrative Manager of Mukaa Mukuu.

It was Churchill who in 1952 ordered a crackdown on the Mau Mau rebellion against British colonial rule in Kenya.

 

The rooms where Musembi claims Roosevelt and Churchill may have slept have been vandalized and now host scrap farm machinery. “Unknown people and some politicians have ….. that belonged to McMillan. What remains is an old tattered sofa set, sink and broken table as everything else, including a telescope that McMillan used to observe wildlife was stolen” Musembi says. Former Cabinet minister Jackson Angaine took McMillan’s wheel bed when he visited the house in 1970, says Musembi. Angaine was then Minister for Lands and settlement.

 

“All McMillan’s possessions had his name printed on them. So it would be easy to identify them,” said Musembi. According to NMK Education Officer Julius Ogega, the guests usually came to the Ol Donyo Sabuk house for buffalo hunting. During crisis times like the First and Second World Wars, guest would disappear underground in bunkers that are fortified with heavy and strong iron beams imported from England. The bunkers were built under the sitting room, dining hall and under a large conference hall.

 

SECRET PRISON

The bunker comprises a conference room, a kitchen and bedrooms. They are ventilated through small windows with vertical steel rails on the side of a cliff on which the main house is built.

 

The bunkers also served as a prison, especially during the Second World War. One of the prominent prisoners was the Governor of Italian East Africa and Commander in Chief of the Italian Army, Air Chief Marshall Ameden di Savoia, Duke of Aosta. After his arrest by British soldiers, he was detained in the bunkers as a prisoner between 1941 and 1942 when he died. Ogega says the survey of the house was done last year when it was declared protected under the National Monuments and Antiques Act.

 

The move to gazette the site came after a visit by anthropology students from the University of Nairobi last year and the lobbying by Kangundo MP Johnston Muthama. The death of McMillan’s wife Lady Luice Fairbanks in 1958 marked the beginning of the house’s fall from its glory during the colonial era.