Early Life
Arthur Bryans was born on the 14
th of March 1852, the third son (of 12 children!) of
Rev. William Bryans and
Sophia Anna Lonsdale. Arthur was born in
Harley Street, London (home to his maternal Lonsdale grandparents), whereas all his siblings were born in Tarvin, or Ash Parva, where their parents lived at the time. He was baptised at
Trinity Church in St Marylebone, London on the 21
st of April 1752.
Unlike all his brothers, it appears that Arthur did not go to Oxford (or Cambridge, for that matter). Perhaps his parents had decided that he wasn't the academic type; maybe he exhibited a more entrepreneurial bent. In any case, Arthur attended
Haileybury College from 1866 (aged 14) to 1868 (aged 16). Haileybury had been formed in 1858 out of the existing buildings which comprised the East India College (the training establishment for administrators of the
East India Company). So there was definitely some element of East India trading / tea etc inculcated into Arthur even at this young age. At least one of his brothers (
Herbert) also went to Haileybury.
Career
After school, Arthur joined his cousin PR Buchanan
1 in managing the
Chargola tea estate in
Sylhet, Assam (now part of Bangladesh) between 1869 and 1877 (so he would have gone out to Assam aged only 17). The following is extracted from a letter his mother
Sophia wrote to his elder brother
Edward¥:
Arty [Arthur] & Patrick Buchanan appeared on Monday. He [Patrick] is a very stout, strong-looking fellow with a broad head and neck and a loud voice. His look & manner struck us at first as very unpolished but he improves upon acquaintance and one can see he is a Gentleman underneath the toughness. He seems particularly straightforward and candid and evidently he has good natural abilities & lots of resolution. Arty likes him & he seems to like A. He has had several youngsters offered him so I supposed we ought to consider A lucky but often when he talks of the tigers, snakes, heat, fevers & agues I begin to wish we had never heard of Cachar [a tea valley in India]. A is in good spirits tho’ at times I fancy he looks a little nervous & anxious. We expect he is to sail on the 8th April.
Arthur’s mother was rather of the old fashioned way of thinking that “business life” was not such a high one as being a doctor or clergy man, but I think she saw clearly how business could be high too and not merely money grubbing. It seems to me that the backbone of a nation is greatly its business integrity†.
The following is taken from a newspaper article
§ about Arthur, recalling his early life in
Sylhet:
Sylhet was then a very different place to get at and live in from what it is now. It took me 3 weeks to get there from Calcutta, and the Chargola Valley, where I went to, was a very isolated part of the world. There was a stockade manned by police just south of me, as a protection against Lushais, who did actually make a raid while I was there. They raided the neighbouring Hailykandy Valley at the same time and, I think, killed a Mr. and Mrs. Winchester and carried off her daughter. A retaliatory expedition was the consequence.
Wild elephants roamed the district to the south and I remember a
kheddah being made there for their capture. There were practically no roads and communications were kept open by boat in the rains. For many months I never saw a white face and never spoke a word of English.
Arthur subsequently became an East India merchant and partner at PR Buchanan & Co, 45 Leadenhall St, EC, London. In 1877 PR Buchanan set up a business in London (PR Buchanan & Co.) and Arthur may well have been a partner at that point (he almost certainly became a partner by 1922). By 1878, supervising tea estates was their main business and the backbone of that business was Chargola. Chargola Tea Co
2 was floated in May 1877 and developed into the Chargola Tea Association
3 in 1891, which comprised Chargola, Singlacherra, Maguracherra, Hingajea. In 1878 there were reported to be 4,800 acres under cultivation.
A letter
† from Arthur's wife
Annie Jessie Burn-Murdoch to their son
Henry reads:
Of course, as regards his first launching into tea life in India at the early age of 17, I had no say in that choice & he very little either, but I have seen his early letters to his mother from India & could see how strongly informed he was from that early age with the idea that he should make money so as not to be a burden to them! I suppose the very Spartan bringing up of the 6 sons at Tarvin informed that, but also & above this his mother always informed her sons with a very strong sense of duty almost to the faulty point of making unpleasant things seem duty! I think she got that from her steady Yorkshire father – Bishop Lonsdale. Well! Be that as it may, it is perhaps specially strong in your father & has pulled him through some very difficult & puzzling times in business.
To go back to when he actually went into London business. We had returned from India the spring of 1877. I had been very ill but we intended going out again. We took a shooting [lodge in] Balinakill, Perthshire, & were a young & very merry party there when Mr Buchanan wrote telling Arthur he was making an agency business in London in connection with tea, especially for “Chargola” which was at that time your father’s property & “would he consider his going into partnership etc etc” & “would Nan consider it too?”. Well, we considered it in a very light & airy fashion & PR B wrote again to me upon what a serious step it was etc etc & had we considered very carefully etc etc etc?!! But the upshot was, we settled down in London & later on at Foots Cray & I don’t think either of us have seriously regretted the step. At one time in our lives your father got rather tired of office life & seriously contemplated farming & made many enquiries about it but always felt glad afterwards that he did not do so. The only terribly difficult & anxious time his firm went through was in 1902/3 when first PR Buchanan & Co. nearly went bankrupt. I have been told privately by a good London Banker and a lawyer that the firm would have gone smash but for your father’s “name & character for honesty & reliability”. I have always been proud of that – though we went through a few years of great anxiety and disappointment in those who father had trusted well, on looking back over all these years.
Arthur was chairman of the Indian Tea Association in 1901-1902 and became president in 1930. He was also a member of the committee of the South Indian Association and the Ceylon Association. He retired in 1933.
As an aside, one of Annie Jessie's cousins was
William Fitzjames Urmston (1859-1883), son of her aunt
Marion Burn-Murdoch who married William Brabazon Urmston. William Fitzjames Urmston died in Chargola, so it seems plausible that he was actually working with or for Arthur on the tea estates.
Family Life
Arthur married
Annie Jessie Burn-Murdoch on the 15
th September 1875 in
Edinburgh, when he was 24 and she was just 19. The wedding was officiated by
William Bryans, Arthur's father. It's not clear how they met given that the
Bryans family were based in Cheshire and the
Burn-Murdochs in Edinburgh, but there's a chance that the families knew each other some how.
Arthur and Annie had six children:
- Dorothy, born in 1879 and who married Robert Alexander John Berry in 1902; they had no issue
- Amy Lonsdale, born in 1881 and who married Lionel Mowbray Hewlett in 1910; her son Anthony married his cousin (and Amy's niece) Frances Celia Lodge
- Helen Maud, born in 1883 and who married John "Jack" Talbot in 1906
- Nora Margaret, born in 1885 and who married Francis Cecil Lodge in 1913; their son married his cousin (and Nora's nephew) Anthony Hewlett; from Nora descend the modern-day families of Lodge, Chapman and Mackay
- Henry Murdoch, born in 1892 and who married Fanny Curtis Mitchell in 1916
- William Buchanan, born in 1893 and who married firstly Mildred Isobel Eleanor Ramsbotham in 1917 with issue, and secondly, Constance Holt; from William descend the modern-day families of Byrans and Lampitt
Residences
- 1881/1891: Foots Cray Cottage, Foots Cray, Kent
- c1900: Woollet Hall (now Loring Hall) in North Cray, Kent
- 1911: The Manor House, Woodmansterne, Surrey
- 1922: Number 8, Talbot Square, Hyde Park, London (City residence)
- 1922-1944: Holmwood Cottage, Surrey (Country residence)
Annie Jessie died in December 1929, leaving Arthur a widower for 15 years.
Death
Arthur died on the 1
st of March 1944, aged 92, at home in
Holmwood Cottage, Holmwood in Surrey. He was buried three days later at
St Mary Magdalene Church in South Holmwood.
Footnotes
[1] PR Buchanan & Co. was established by Patrick Robertson Buchanan, who was married to Harriette Bryans. In turn, Hariette Bryans was Arthur's cousin, so effectively PR Buchanan was Arthur's cousin-in-law and just six years older than him.
More info on PR Buchanan:
https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/b2321881-e162-3865-92fb-99c020d82e62
[2] Chargola Tea Association
https://archive.org/stream/teaproducingcomp00gowwrich/teaproducingcomp00gowwrich_djvu.txt
[3] Arthur's brother Herbert William Bryans was listed as a Director of the Chargola Tea Association
† Letter from Annie Jessie Bryans (née Burn-Murdoch) to her son Henry, 18
th November 1918;
L_1918_11_Bryans_Bryans_1
§
N_Unknown_ABryans_Profile
¥
L_1869_03_Bryans_Bryans_1
1852 - 1944 (91 years)
[1, 2] 
