John Tremayne
(1825-1901)
25 October 1860

Volume 2, page 55, sitting number 1520.

John Tremayne was the owner of Heligan at Mevagissy in Cornwall. Heligan House, meaning ‘the willows’ in Cornish, has been the seat of the Tremayne family since it was built by William Tremayne in 1603. Its magnificent 'Lost Gardens' have recently been the subject of an extensive restoration project. According to Bateman's Great Landowners of Great Britain and Ireland (4th edition, 1883), John Tremayne owned 5316 acres in Cornwall with a gross annual value £9137 and a further 5951 acres in Devon with a gross annual value of £4860.

John Tremayne was born in the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields [London] in 1825, the eldest son of John Hearle Tremayne and Caroline née Lemon. He was educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford. On 13 November 1860 he married the Honourable Mary Charlotte Martha Vivian, daughter of Charles Crespigny Vivian, 2nd Baron Vivian, and his second wife, Mary Elizabeth Panton. She was born in 1842 in Plas Gwyn, Pentraeth, Anglesey, North Wales.

The couple had two sons, Perys Edmund (born 1866, died 1867), and John Claude Lewis (born 1869), and three daughters.

In 1859 John Tremayne was High Sheriff for the County. He appears on the 1861 census staying, with his wife, at the house of his father-in-law, Charles Crespigny Vivian, 2nd Baron Vivian. He gave his profession as 'Deputy Lieutenant and Magistrate of Cornwall and Devonshire.'

From 1874 to 1880 he was the Member of Parliament for Cornwall (East) and from 1884 to 1885, he represented South Devon.

John Tremayne died at the Villa Roya in Biarritz on 7 April 1901, at the age of 75. His estate was valued at £137,679. 'In recent years Mr Tremayne suffered from impaired heatlh, and a good deal of his time was spent at Sydenham or on the Continent. To those who did not know his precise age it will be a suprise to learn that he was 75, for in recent years he maintained a healthy vigour of both mind and body. He was aptly described as a perfect specimen of a country gentleman - manly, courteous and outspoken' (Western Morning News, 9 April 1901).

[Neither the sitter not the photographer has made any attempt to hide Tremayne's orthopaedic boot, which is prominently and proudly displayed in the foreground of the portrait.]