² Gray, John, Early Portuguese Missionaries in East Africa (London, 1958)Google Scholar.

³ Frankl, P. J. L., “Krapf, Johann Ludwig (1810-1881): pioneer linguist, missionary and traveller in eastern Africa,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford 2004 (revised online edition, May 2005)Google Scholar.

⁴ Letter dated 20 December 1833 from James Emery (1791-1889) to W. D. Cooley, in the Library of the Royal Geographical Society, London. Emery had lived in Mombasa for almost two years in the early 1820s. His diary gives the first eyewitness account of Mombasa since the Portuguese-Christian occupation.

⁵ The CMS was born out of the evangelical revival and founded in 1799 as an independent society within the Church of England.

⁶ Krapf, J. L., Travels, Researches, and Missionary Labours during an Eighteen Years' Residence in Eastern Africa (London, 1860), 135Google Scholar.

⁷ Frankl, P. J. L., “An Arabic Deed of Sale from Swahili Mombasa dated 1292 AH / AD 1875,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 20/1 (1993), 33–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ Until the early 1930s Mombasa island and the northern mainland were unconnected by a bridge and travelers made the crossing by ferry.

⁹ Royston, P. S., The Mombasa Mission of the Church Missionary Society (London, 1879), 5Google Scholar.

¹⁰ The Governor of Mombasa: at this time the Liwali of Mombasa (i.e., the representative of the Busa‘idi Sultan resident in Zanzibar), was Ali bin Nasir.

¹¹ The unoccupied Mission-house: surely a reference to Leven House.

¹² Hamis the Arab: Khamis bin Saad al-Mandhry. He died in Mombasa on Saturday 14 Rajab 1306 AH / AD 16 March 1889. For a photograph see Price, W. Salter, My Third Campaign in East Africa (London, 1890), 325Google Scholar. The illustration had previously appeared in the Church Missionary Gleaner (March 1877), 27Google Scholar. Mr Price: the Reverend William Salter Price (1825-1911) was employed by the CMS, and served three tours of duty in Mombasa: 1875-76,1881-82, and 1888-89 (CMS Register of Missionaries, Part 1, List 1, Item 401).

¹³ At that time there was also an Anglican diocese of Central Africa, served by the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (UMCA). In 1861 Charles Frederick Mackenzie had been consecrated “Bishop of the Mission to the tribes dwelling in the neighborhood of the Lake Nyasa and the River Shire.”

¹⁴ Mrima: the east African coast from Vanga (Wanga) to the mouth of the river Ruvuma. McDermott, P. L., British East Africa or IBEA: A History of the Formation and Work of the IBEAC (London, 1893), 263–67Google Scholar. It was not the Union Jack but the red flag of the Busa‘idi sultans resident in Zanzibar which flew over Mombasa Island (and the rest of the Protectorate) until the early 1960s.

¹⁵ McDermott, , British East Africa, 268–75Google Scholar.

¹⁶ CMS G3/A5/01890/134, Tucker to CMS, Frere Town 19 May 1890. Documents quoted herein are by permission of the University of Birmingham library on behalf of the Church Missionary Society. There is no doubt that the original proposal was to build the Hannington-Parker Memorial Church in Frere Town (CMS F/PY/A5/12, appeal prepared by A. Downes-Shaw, 1888).

¹⁷ Gazette, 14 December 1892, 5Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Frankl, P. J. L., “Taylor, William Ernest (1856-1927), Swahili scholar and missionary”, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar, revised online edition, May 2007. Taylor is England's greatest Swahili scholar, but this article is not the place to discuss his complex character (which his fellow missionaries recognized) nor his talented scholarship (which they did not, on the whole, appreciate).

¹⁹ Arthur Hardinge (1859-1933) was His Majesty's Commissioner and Consul-General of the East Africa Protectorate from 1896 to 1900. PRO FO/107/36. Without the benefit of foresight, the Swahili of Mombasa (the waMiji) could not know that Hardinge's proclamation of protection also sounded their death-knell, but that is another story for another time.

²⁰ CMS F/PY/A5/12, Hardinge to Binns, Mombasa, 24 July 1897.

²¹ See CMS F/PY/A5/12. Much time was expended and much ink spilled by the CMS in London as to whether or not Tucker (about to leave Mombasa for Uganda) was authorized to bind his successors to the undertakings required by the title deed. There is a version in the Lands Office, Mombasa. File A6, Registration No 127A of 1898 – in the accompanying map the baobab tree ‘[m]buyu’, which still stands today at the entrance to the cathedral precincts, is given as a boundary marker. In front of the CMS property ran the “Kilindini Railway to Mombasa.” On the other side of the railway were the properties of (a) Messrs A.M. Jivanji & Co; (b) Mr Sorabji; (c) Dewjibhoy Jamal & Co. To the rear of the property were two large plots, one marked as “Government Land”, and the other as the “property of Mr R. N. Boustead,” proprietor of the Mombasa Club (a club for Europeans only), and of the Mombasa Stores at 25 Vasco da Gama Road. Cathedral Road is not shown.

A similar but not identical, sketch, dated 1903, survives in which Cathedral Road appears (CMS G3/A5/01903/89). In brief, the boundaries of the CMS compound were: North Kilindini Road; South Government ground and Boustead's shamba; East Land belonging to the National Bank of India; West Cathedral Road.

²² Hardinge, Arthur, Report on the British East Africa Protectorate for the year 1897-1898 (London, 1899), 19Google Scholar.

A few months earlier, the Roman church, represented by Fr Charles Sacleux (1856-1943), the French Vicar-General (and greatest of Swahili lexicographers) had been sold “government land” on Mombasa Island also “at a reduced rate” and for the same purpose. By 1955 the Roman Catholic mission in Mombasa had become a diocese, with a cathedral church built on the plot acquired over half a century earlier by Fr Sacleux (and which was still referred to as Kwa Faransa). Roman Catholics in Mombasa were thin on the ground. A letter at about this time from a Roman Catholic nursing sister working at the (European) government hospital on Mombasa island recorded: “Nous sommes bien isolées dans ce coin de l'Afrique où tous les Wanes sont protestants, et les noirs, mahométans ou païens.” Published in the Bulletin of the Congrégation de Saint Joseph de Cluny, Paris

²³ Mungeam, G. H., British Rule in Kenya 1895-1912 (Oxford, 1966), 65Google Scholar. The locus classicus of that symbiotic relationship between church and state in Kenya Colony was to be found in Nairobi where Bishopsbourne and Government House stood side by side. There is documentary evidence in the CMS archives which mentions that the lower orders of missionary were never, or hardly ever, entertained by British officials.

²⁴ The CMS compound had a concrete tennis court along the southern end of the boundary wall with the National Bank of India. Francis Hall to his father Col. Hall, dd 1 March 1899 (Hall Papers, Rhodes House Library, Oxford).

²⁵ impurity abounds: no examples are given, unfortunately. Proceedings of the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East (London, 1902/1903), 90Google Scholar.

²⁶ The ever-growing English community: from the wording of the deed of sale it is probable that both Tucker (the Church) and Hardinge (the State) envisaged a church building that would serve an “English” congregation.

²⁷ There are various estimates for the population of Mombasa at this period; all are agreed that the overwhelming majority of the town was composed of Sunni Muslims (Swahili, Baluchi, Arab in that order). For example, Mombasa in 1899, out of an estimated population of 14,000, had 11,500 Sunni Muslims (Kenya National Archives CP/92/159, letter dated 25 September 1899 from F. D. Talati to sub-commissioner). Even without statistics, it is clear that one hundred years later the proportion of Sunni Muslims to the rest of the population within the now extensive boundaries of Mombasa Municipality has been much reduced.

²⁸ From 1892 to 1895, as we have seen, English services were held “in the offices of the IBEAC.”

²⁹ In 1907 the British transferred the capital of the East Africa Protectorate from Mombasa to Nairobi (the headquarters of the East Africa & Uganda Railway had already been transferred to Nairobi in 1899).

³⁰ The £400 refers to the cost of the temporary church.

³¹ J. H. Sinclair (1871-1961). For biographical details see Who's Who; North, Stephen J., Europeans in British Administered East Africa (Wantage, 2000), 292Google Scholar, which includes a photograph of a youthful Sinclair, and Sinclair's own typewritten autobiography. For obituaries see The Times (19 August 1961), 10, and (28 August 1961), 10. From Tucker's account it seems that Sinclair was the architect for the temporary church. Slightly later he drew up or revised plans for the cathedral. Sinclair designed other buildings in Mombasa, and in Dar es Salaam as well. In Zanzibar he was responsible for the new British Residency, a central market, law courts, the National Bank of India (now the Bank of Tanzania) the main post office, the Peace Memorial Museum, and other buildings, including his own house—all blending with the existing urban environment. Sinclair surely merits a serious architectural study.

³² Tucker, A. R., Eighteen Years in Uganda and East Africa (2 vols.: London, 1908), 2:98Google Scholar.

³³ William George Peel (bishop 1899-1916). When the vast diocese of Eastern Equatorial Africa was divided in 1897 Tucker chose to become the first Bishop of Uganda, while Peel was consecrated as the first Bishop of Mombasa in 1899. Even without Uganda the see of Mombasa was vast, including both the East Africa Protectorate and that part of German East Africa which was not within the UMCA sphere of influence.

³⁴ In 1900 bishop Peel wrote: “J. H. Sinclair Esq., Vice-Consul Zanzibar, is most kindly preparing new plans for the Hannington-Parker Memorial Church” (Missions of the CMS in the Diocese of Mombasa in 1900, 2).

“The [Mombasa] Executive Committee cordially agree to a testimonial being given to Mr Sinclair for the great amount of time, labour and skill given so willingly in preparing plans, estimates and specifications.” CMS Archives G3/A5/01903/126, Minute dd 4 August. 1903.

³⁵ In 1903 Sir Charles Eliot (1862-1931) was His Majesty's Commissioner and Commander-in-Chief for the East Africa Protectorate; in 1904 he tendered his resignation.

³⁶ The [East] African Standard (4 July 1903), 4Google Scholar.

³⁷ Sir Victor Buxton, Bt. (1865-1919), CMS treasurer.

³⁸ Buxton, T. F. V., “Glimpses of Work in British East Africa,” Church Missionary Intelligencer 56 (January 1905)Google Scholar.

³⁹ A photograph of the original Buxton High School is to be found in Church Missionary Gleaner (1 September. 1905), 140. The school moved from the CMS compound to Manyimbo (closer to Frere Town) during the years 1927-30. After 1910 the situation in Mombasa altered radically, for the protecting power took the decision that the education of Arabs and Swahilis (and Baluchis), and Indians, should take place in separate schools. The first such government school in the East Africa Protectorate opened in Mombasa in 1912. This was the Arab School, Serani; (the government in German East Africa had opened Tanga School as early as 1894). To the best of my knowledge no detailed study of western-style education in Britain's East Africa Protectorate (1895-1920) has been made.

⁴⁰ Buxton, , Glimpses, 14Google Scholar.

⁴¹ by public subscription: this gives a misleading impression. In fact more than ninety percent of the money was provided by the CMS (some £4,000, albeit from a special fund collected in memory of Messrs Hannington, Parker and Wright), while the balance, some £400, was contributed by the public.

⁴² dedication: “a service of full dedication was held without the sentence of consecration” (CMS G3/A5/01905/72). In a note to Peel, Baylis distinguished between “dedication” and “consecration” (CMS G3/A5/L9/399). Two months before the dedication the British had transferred the administration of their East Africa Protectorate from the Foreign Office to the Colonial Office.

⁴³ Eastern: The plan was in the saracenic style—that is, having Islamic connotations. There is a brief description of Mombasa cathedral in Clarke, Basil F. L., Anglican Cathedrals outside the British Isles (London, 1958), 44Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Church Missionary Intelligencer 56 (August 1905), 611Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Mr Sorabjee, a Parsi, also built the Treasury Buildings and the National Bank of India, to mention only a few of the principal buildings (the National Bank of India was the only bank in Mombasa from 1896 until 1911, when the Standard Bank of South Africa opened its doors).

⁴⁶ “The two-manual Liszt organ, which has nineteen stops, and is the very best of Mason and Hamlin's organs, is being ordered from England. The published price is £220 (list price). Subscriptions in England and locally, Church offertories, and a grant from the Bishop's Diocesan Fund, will meet the cost. Until the Memorial Cathedral shall be ready the new organ will be used in the Temporary Church:” W. G. Mombasa, Bishop's Court 21 April 1903 (CMS G3/A5/01903/86). A new organ was installed in 1931.

⁴⁷ [East] African Standard, (3 June 1905), 4Google Scholar. Two photographs of the cathedral, exterior and interior, appear in the Church Missionary Intelligencer (October 1905), between pages 800 and 801.

⁴⁸ John Houston Sinclair, “Senex Africanus: Reminiscences of Early Days in England, Kenya, Zanzibar and Tangier,” carbon copy of typescript in Cambridge University Library, RCSMSS.47, 51.

⁴⁹ in Swahili: the version of Swahili employed would almost certainly have been kiSwahili cha kiMisheni, the Swahili speech of the waMisheni “detribalised, liberated slaves and their offspring who had turned to the religion of the European-Christian missionaries,” e.g., the waMisheni who settled at Frere Town (or, in Swahili, K'engeleni). Their speech would have been based on the Swahili spoken in Zanzibar town. There were printed service books in the Swahili of Mombasa (Bible translations, the Book of Common Prayer, and hymn books, all the work of W. E. Taylor), but they were not well received by the local CMS authorities. From the very beginning there was friction at the cathedral between the English-speaking congregation and the Swahili-speaking congregations, primarily based on race, not on language. Any of the local Swahili (the wa Miii) who learned of these differences would surely have been astonished. The CMS archives contain material relating to this matter.

⁵⁰ Proceedings…, London 1906/1907, 64Google Scholar. Forty persons: whether the number refers to the congregation at all four Sunday services, or to the two Swahili services only, or to the two English services only is unclear.

⁵¹ Bishop's Court: it seems that the first three bishops (Hannington, Parker, and Tucker) all lived at Frere Town. The fourth bishop, Peel, also lived at Frere Town when he first arrived in the Protectorate (where Bishop's Court, Frere Town, was located I do not know). In 1900 Bishop Peel wrote to the CMS in London that “Frere Town is not [at] all a convenient place for the abode of the bishop. Mombasa is expanding very rapidly. Its growing importance renders it rather imperative that my headquarters should be there.” (CMS G3/A5/01900/6). After the construction of the cathedral church, the temporary English church was sold to the CMS and converted to a private dwelling; plans for the conversion—not Sinclair's work—have survived (CMS G3/A5/01905/16). In October 1904 £600 was sanctioned for this purpose and in January 1905 a further £60 (CMS G3/A5/P6/135). In 1911 Bishop Peel decided to reside at Nairobi for a portion of each year, so the diocese then had two episcopal residences—Bishop's Court, Mombasa (in the future Kenya Protectorate) and Bishopsbourne, Nairobi (in the future Kenya Colony). The ladies of the Mission then occupied the bishop's portion of Bishop's Court, the Ladies' House (on the south side of the cathedral) being let.

⁵² Church Missionary Gleaner (1 July 1908), 100Google Scholar.

⁵³ Wright, George W., “Mombasa—Its Position and Possibilities,” Church Missionary Review [formerly The Church Missionary Intelligencer] (1911), 299Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 300. (printed Swahili in Roman characters first appeared in 1849).

⁵⁵ This system of racial segregation in Mombasa was brought about in part by plague, and by the consequent report of ProfessorSimpson, W. J., “Report on the Sanitation of Mombasa” (Nairobi 1913)Google Scholar; enclosed in Item 186 of “Further Correspondence relating to Medical and Sanitary Matters in tropical Africa,” African No 1008, (London, 1914)Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ The Times (17 March 1916), 3Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Kenya Colony and Protectorate came into being in 1920.

⁵⁸ Stock, Eugene. History of the Church Missionary Society (4 vols.: London, 1916), 4:96Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ the fact: it is possible that “the fact” may not be a fact.

⁶⁰ Holway, James D., “CMS Contact with Islam in East Africa before 1914,” Journal of Religion in Africa 4(1971/1972), 212CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶¹ Stock, Eugene, “Bishop Peel of Mombasa,” Church Missionary Review 67(1916), 329-35, 443–58Google Scholar. A photograph of Bishop Peel appears in the Church Missionary Gleaner (1 June 1916), 74Google Scholar. At the time of writing there is also a photograph in the cathedral vestry.

⁶² the property of the CMS in London: mission property in Frere Town (Kengeleni) and Mombasa Island were first transferred to the CMS in London in July 1888: Price, W. Salter, My Third Campaign in East Africa (London, 1898), 101Google Scholar.

⁶³ For Namirembe there is a truly excellent history and guide: Moon, Karen, St Paul's Cathedral, Namirembe (Richmond [Surrey], 1994)Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ Sinclair arrived in Mombasa from England in 1896 as local auditor to the East Africa Protectorate, then administered by the Foreign Office in London; he left Mombasa for Zanzibar in 1899.

⁶⁵ Sheriff, Abdul, Zanzibar Stone Town (Zanzibar, 1998), 89Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ The Revd H. W. Binns (CMS G3/A5/01905/15, letter from Frere Town dated 9 January 1905).

⁶⁷ Kenya Gazette, Notice 2443 of 16 May 1997, 914 (one of the three plot numbers is given incorrectly).

⁶⁸ Ibid., Notice 6017 of 14 November 1997, 1884 (one of the three plot numbers is given incorrectly).

⁶⁹ Kenya Gazette Supplement No 63 (Acts No 6), published on 8 September 2006.

⁷⁰ Mombasa Island block xxv/new parcel 70 (west side of Cathedral Road). I have not found evidence that Peel ever lived here, but, for a brief period in about 1904/05, he could have done so after vacating Bishop's Court in Frere Town, but before moving into the newly converted Bishop's Court next to the cathedral church.

⁷¹ curtilage: might be defined as a piece of ground surrounding or adjacent to a listed building or national monument and forming a unit with the listed building or monument. For information on this subject I am grateful to Peter Rankin of Messrs Cleaver Fulton & Rankin, Solicitors, Belfast.