Charles Joseph Braine (1814-1890) – Patriarch of the Braines in Ceylon

By George Braine

C.J. Braine was born in Middlesex, England, in 1814. He began working for Dent & Co. in China and moved to Hong Kong in 1941, when the island was occupied by the British. In Hong Kong, he was listed as a partner of Dent & Co., a Justice of the Peace and a member of the Asiatic Society.

Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, Braine was best known as the owner of Green Bank, a large, luxuriant garden. A vivid description of the garden can be found in A Journey to the Tea Countries of China by Robert Fortune (1852). Fortune wrote that rugged mountains were seen to one side of Green Bank, contrasting with the lush vegetation of the garden. He lists the shrubs and fruit trees, such as Chinese banyan, India rubber, Indian neem, Chinese cinnamon, coconut, loquat, Chinese gooseberry, wangpee, longan, leechee, pinus, bamboo, and more.

A bamboo avenue called “Orchid Walk”, cool even in midday, led to an orchid garden, in which numerous of orchid plants are listed by their scientific names. Above Orchid Walk were banks of myrtles, gardenias, oleander, and croton. A large collection of plants was placed on each side of the broad terrace in front of the “mansion”. These plants, camellias, azaleas, roses, and others plants were grown in pots “prettily painted in Chinese style and placed on porcelain stands”.

Braine was married to Eudora Marriott and they had 10 children. Two, Julia Caroline and Helen, were born in Hong Kong, in 1848 and 1849. Eudora passed away in 1873. She was only 55.

House at Green Bank around 1850. Lush greenery around the house and rugged hills in the distance.

Charles Joseph Braine 

Eudora Marriot Braine

The area of Green Bank is now known as Lan Kwai Fong, famous for its nightlife.

Braine appears to have left Hong Kong around 1850. Before he left Hong Kong, Braine had sent Sir William Jackson Hooker, Director of Kew Gardens, London, dried ferns and a large collection of seeds. The two letters he wrote to Hooker are on record. Known as a passionate collector of ferns, one, Brainea, is named after Charles Joseph Braine.

Britain

Braine next appears, in 1850, as the owner of a stately mansion, Abbotsley, in Devon, UK. He must have been wealthy, paying £6300 (about £800,000 in today’s money) for the 36-acre property. Having renamed it “Abbotsleigh”, Braine began to develop it, adding a 52-foot conservatory, a greenhouse, a well-planted walled garden, ornamental trees and thriving plantations in undulating park-like pastures. He persuaded Kew Gardens to supply the trees and shrubs. New farm buildings were also added, with stables and cow sheds, supplied with spring and rain water, poultry sheds, barns for implements and root crops, a harness room and a liquid manure tank. The workers’ accommodation had  a gardener’s cottage and a coach house with a groom’s room above it.

Abbotsleigh House, 1850

Six of his children were born at Abbotsleigh. But, Braine got into disputes with his neighbors, and to financial difficulties as well, having to mortgage the property for £5000. The house was sold in 1862 to the Roman Catholic church, and Augustinian nuns moved in to start a Priory.

Recent view of Abbotsleigh Priory

Ceylon

In 1862, Braine moved to Ceylon as the manager of Ceylon Co. In 1880, he is listed as the owner of Abbotsleigh Estate in the Dickoya area. He may have bought some acres of forest, cleared it, and planted coffee. The timing was not good, because a leaf disease known as the “coffee blight” began to spread and decimated the coffee plantations. Of 1700 coffee planters, only 400 stayed on in Ceylon.

Braine must have left, because, in 1881, he is listed as the head of a household in Kensington, in central London. In 1879, he had hired a manager, Norman Roswell, for Abbotsleigh.  (Roswell later became the Ceylon’s first Commissioner of Labor.) By 1883, only 19 acres at Abbotsleigh were used for tea, while 209 acres were used for coffee and cinnamon. Braine is listed as the owner of Abbotsleigh till 1884.

Two of his sons, Charles Frederick (in 1880) and Arthur Belgrave came to Ceylon as planters. Neither joined Abbotsleigh Estate.

Following Charles Joseph’s lead, three generations Braines became coffee, tea, rubber, and coconut planters in Ceylon.

In Australia, his descendants live in Brisbane and Melbourne.

Charles Joseph Braine passed away in England on 22 October 1890. He was my great, great grandfather.

Abbotsleigh bungalow

Abbotsleigh tea factory