Happy Valley Set

The Happy Valley set was largely a group of hedonistic British and Anglo-Irish aristocrats and adventurers who settled in the Happy Valley region of the Wanjohi Valley, near the Aberdare mountain range, in the colonies of Kenya and Uganda between the 1920s and the 1940s. From the 1930s the group became infamous for its decadent lifestyles and exploits following reports of drug use and sexual promiscuity.

The area around Naivasha was one of the first to be settled in Kenya by white people and was one of the main hunting grounds of the 'set'. The colonial town of Nyeri, Kenya, to the east of the Aberdare Range, was the centre of Happy Valley settlers.

The white community in Kenya in the years before the Second World War was divided into two distinct factions: settlers, on the one side, and colonial officials and tradesmen, on the other. Both were dominated by upper-middle-class and upper-class British and Irish (chiefly Anglo-Irish) people, but the two groups often disagreed on important matters ranging from land allocation to how to deal with the natives. Typically, the officials and tradesmen looked on the Happy Valley set with embarrassment.

The height of the Happy Valley set's influence was in the late 1920s. The recession sparked by the 1929 Wall Street stock market crash greatly decreased the number of new arrivals to the Colony of Kenya and the influx of capital. Nevertheless, by 1939 Kenya had a white community of 21,000 people.

Some of the members (some described below) of the Happy Valley set were: The 3rd Baron Delamere and his son and heir The 4th Baron Delamere; The Hon. Denys Finch Hatton; The Hon. Berkeley Cole (an Anglo-Irish nobleman from Ulster); Sir Jock Delves Broughton, 11th Bt.; The 22nd Earl of Erroll; Lady Idina Sackville; Alice de Janzé (cousin of J. Ogden Armour); Frédéric de Janzé; Lady Diana Delves Broughton; Gilbert Colville; Hugh Dickenson; Jack Soames; Nina Soames; Lady June Carberry (stepmother of Juanita Carberry); Dickie Pembroke; and Julian Lezzard. Author Baroness Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) had also been a friend of Lord Erroll.

The lifestyle finally became untenable as the Mau Mau Uprising progressed during the 1950s.

In recent years, descendants of the Happy Valley set have been appearing in the news, particularly the legal troubles of The Hon. Tom Cholmondeley, the great-grandson of the famous Lord Delamere.