Mark Arnold Napier Stark

The following information has been gleaned from letters written to, from and about Nap by his siblings [MHB].

Napier (Nap) Stark was the youngest of six siblings born in Oxford to their surgeon/GP father. He attended Oxford Preparatory School (later to be called the Dragon School), and afterwards Sherborne School, in Dorset (Abbeylands House).

WWI broke out while he was still a pupil there, and he found himself training within the same school buildings before further training in 1916 at Prees Heath Camp, near Whitchurch, in Shropshire, followed by the 101st Training Reserve Battalion at Albuhera Barracks, Stanhope Lines, Aldershot. He was eventually posted out to France with the 11th Battalion, Leicestershire Regiment. He was injured but survived the war.

Even before the war ended, he was wondering what career to follow afterwards and in which country. He was keen on farming and considered New Zealand and Canada. In 1922 he arrived in East Africa and by 1925 he was living in Kenya, near Nairobi, managing a large area of land and working very hard, including sourcing and growing maize. He never married.

His death in a night-time fire in his hut was a mystery, unresolved at the inquest.

The Kenya Gazette, on 14 March 1933, gave notice that Lilian Emily Frances Overton had applied for probate of his will. He was named as Mark Arnold Napier Stark, late of Nairobi, who died at Nairobi on 28 November 1932.