BENEFACTOR OF NAVY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20901, 17 June 1931, Page 10

BENEFACTOR OF NAVY.

LATE MR. G. S. READE.

A PERMANENT MEMORIAL.

ERECTION AT HILLSBOROUGH.

The executors o! the late Mr. Gifford Sherman Reade, who gave the whole of liis greats wealth to the Admiralty, have pi-epared a fitting joint memorial to himself and Mrs. Reade for erection on tlieir graves at the Hillsborough Cemetery. After the design bad been submitted to the Admiralty for technical correction the work was put in the hands of a Torquay .firm of stonemasons. It is not yet known when the monument will be ready for erection.

A large Latin cross is a central feature of the design, and an anchor is prominent on the base, where the names and particulars are inscribed. The monument is surrounded by a low wall on which is recorded the nature of Mr. Reado's benefaction to the Navy.

Mrs. Reade died in Auckland on July 6, 1929, and Mr. Reade on December 5 of the same year at the ago of 85. Worldwide attention .was focussed on his quiet life in the year before when the gift of. his ancestral Holbrook estate in Suffolk to lb« nation for a.new naval school was made known. In this gift he divested himself of all but a small, income sufficient to maintain him in his closing years. The straight out gift of the estate to the Admiralty ho endowed with a sum of money large enough to justify the Admiralty in erecting a college at a cost of £1,000,000. It was estimated that'the sum eventually available from the accumulated endowments would be considerably in excess of £1,000,000. Mr. Reade's fortune was amassed as the proprietor of several tea estates in Assam, where he also acquired interests in many other industres, notably coal. Mr. Reade was accorded a naval funeral at the Hillsborough Cemetery and eight men from the New Zealand station acted as pall-bearers.' Official wreaths were sent from the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, from the commanders, officers and men of the ships of the New Zealand station and from the Royal Naval School at Greenwich.