Cecil Ralph Townshend Congreve (17 September 1876 – 3 June 1952), more often referred to as C.R.T. Congreve, was among the earliest English tea planters in the Anamalai hills of southern India.

Life and work

Congreve was born in Stafford,

Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, the West Midlands Cou ...

, the son of Fanny Emma Townshend and William Congreve, and was educated at

Charterhouse school (God having given, I gave) , established = , closed = , type = Public school Independent day and boarding school , religion = Church of England , president ...

Godalming Godalming is a market town and civil parish in southwest Surrey, England, around southwest of central London. It is in the Borough of Waverley, at the confluence of the Rivers Wey and Ock. The civil parish covers and includes the settleme ...

in 1891. He went out to India in 1896 and was trained briefly under E.G. Windle, a prominent planter from The Nilgiris.Langley, W. K. M (1952). C. R.T. Congreve, C.B.E. - An Appreciation
The Planters' Chronicle, July 15, VolXLVII, No. 14
Later he joined G. A. Carver Marsh who was one of the early explorers of

Anaimalai Hills The Anamala or Anaimalai, also known as the Elephant Mountains, are a range of mountains in the southern Western Ghats of central Kerala ( Idukki district, Ernakulam district, Palakkad district, Thrissur district) and span the border of wes ...

in Southern Western Ghats and instrumental in opening up this region for tea and

coffee plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...

. Congreve moved to the Anamallais in March 1897 to help Carver Marsh in establishing tea plantations. Congreve married Esme Maud Rowsell on 28 February 1911. They had three sons and lived in Blair Atholl,

Coonoor Coonoor, natively spelt as Kunnur (), is a Taluk and a municipality of the Nilgiris district in the Indian State of Tamil Nadu. As of 2011, the town had a population of 45,494. Demographics According to 2011 census, Coonoor had a population ...

. After a divorce he married Margaret 'Ann' Louis Wilson Somerville on 20 May 1933. They had a daughter named Julia in 1934. Congreve was an honorary secretary of Anamalai Planters Association from 1907 to 1909. He was a member of the

Madras Legislative Council Tamil Nadu Legislative Council was the upper house of the former bicameral legislature of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It began its existence as Madras Legislative Council, the first provincial legislature for Madras Presidency. It was init ...

during 1922-25 and 1926–29. He was chairman during 1920-21 and 1930-32 of The United Planters' Association of Southern India (UPASI) and served as its president in 1937–38. Congreve was a member of the Ooty hunt club and the Joint Master of the Ooty Hunt 1936 – 1938. He was appointed CBE in 1941. He retired as a planter from Valparai in 1945. He wrote ''The Anamallais'', published in 1941 about his experiences in the Anamalai hills. He died on 3 June 1952, in the castle Ruthin, Denbighshire, Wales, when he was 75 years old.

References

External links

Anamalais
(1938, reprint)
original print
{{DEFAULTSORT:Congreve, Cecil Ralph Townshend 1952 deaths People educated at Charterhouse School British planters People from Staffordshire (before 1974) 1876 births Planters from British India