Returning from the Cape in 1928, after an unsuccessful diamond mining venture, Ernest Barraclough faced up to the failure of his farming venture in Essex. The farm was sold and the proceeds invested in equities. This was hardly good timing as the Great Depression was about to break upon the western world, taking stock market levels down to historically low levels and leaving many businesses bankrupt and millions out of work. Ernest decided to emigrate to Kenya Colony.

Travelling up-country Ernest decided that a hotel was needed in the neighbourhood of Thomson’s Falls, a small settlement in the south-west corner of Laikipia district, at the northern foot of the Aberdare range and situated some 7,800 feet above mean sea level. There he found a perfect site to build one, immediately opposite the falls on the Ewaso Narok river which have a sheer drop of 243 feet and had been discovered by, and named after, the Scottish geologist and naturalist, Joseph Thomson, in 1883.

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