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Clara Coltman (C.C.) Rogers was born in 1885 on the family ranch in Queensland. Although situated on the coast, overlooking the Great Barrier reef, the cattle ranch was also unbelievably remote with the nearest town 120 miles away whilst the neighbouring ranch house was an extraordinary 100 miles distant.
Rogers was a member of the Williams family of Caerhays, Scorrier and Burncoose which had made an enormous fortune from mining and agriculture but who were also famous for their gardens and horticultural expertise. She was a descendant of the noted mineralogist, John Williams (August 3rd) and was also related to the man who purchased the near derelict Caerhays Castle some decades after its builder, John Bettesworth-Trevanion (March 8th) had fled to the continent to avoid the social and financial ruin of bankruptcy. In 1887, the family returned to Cornwall, leaving the ranch in the hands of Clara’s brother, Michael. Clara’s father, Edward Powys Rogers was a member of the Coltman Rogers family of Stanage Park in Powys, famous for its crenellated mansion and which remains in the hands of the same family. Clara spent a great deal of her time with her relatives. Educated at home by a governess but with her schooling interrupted by periodic returns to Queensland for up to six months at a time, Clara studied at the Women’s University Settlement (founded by Henrietta Barnett in 1887 with the aim ‘to promote the welfare of the people of the poorer districts of London and especially of the women and children’) and then became a social worker in the same area.
She returned to Scorrier House in 1914 as one sister, Harriet was to marry and her younger sister Naomi was, being under 20, deemed too young apparently to be the ‘Home Daughter’. Tragically, Naomi died of pneumonia the same year. The grieving family went on a European tour and were on the continent when the First World War was declared. One of the first casualties of the war was Clara’s brother Harry who was killed in action at the Battle of Coronel and died less than six months after his sister. Clara became a war nurse at Touen and it was here that she met her future husband, Sir Courtenay Bourchier Vyvyan 10th Baronet, of Trelowarren who was twenty-seven years her elder. After the war, Clara travelled across Canada and submitted articles for publication whose success encouraged her to start writing in earnest. She married Sir Courtenay Vyvyan in 1929 and inherited Trelowarren from her husband when he died 12 years later (1941) at a time when the, requisitioned, house was used by American soldiers. Two of her closest friends were Daphne du Maurier (May 13th) who used Trelowarren as the setting for ‘Frenchman’s Creek’ and for the Manderley gardens in ‘Rebecca’ and Foy Quiller Couch, daughter of ‘Q’ (May 12th). Most famous for her gently written books on nature and the Cornish countryside, C.C. Rogers published twenty three books of which her most renowned and loved include ‘Echoes in Cornwall’ (1926), ‘The Scilly Isles’ (1953), ‘The Old Place’ (1952) ‘The Helford River’ (1956), and ‘Letters From a Cornish Garden’ (1972) She also published travel books including ‘On Timeless Shores: Journeys Around Ireland’ (1957) and ‘Down the Rhone on Foot’ (1955). |
