BENEFACTOR OF NAVY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17498, 19 June 1931, Page 7

BENEFACTOR OF NAVY

LATE MR. G. S. READE A PERMANENT MEMORIAL The executors of the late Mr. Gifford Sherman Reade, who gave the whole ot Ins great wealth to the Admiralty, have prepared a fitting joint memorial to nimseif and Mrs. Reade for erection on their graves at the Hillsborough Cemetery, Auckland. 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 ha tin cross is a central feature oi 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 Ml'. Readc’s benefaction to the Navy. Mrs. Iteade died in Auckland on July 6, 1929, and Mr. Reade on December 5 oi tho same year at the age of 85. World-wide attention was focussed on his quiet life in the year before when tho gift of his ancestral Holbrook estate in Suffolk to the nation for a new naval school was made known. In this gift lie 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 he endowed with a sum of money large enough to justify the Admiralty in erupting a college at a cost of £1,000,000. It was estimated that the sum eventually available from tho accumulated endowments would be considerably in excess of £1,000,000. Mr. Reade's fortune was amassed as the proprietor of several lea estates in Assam, where he also acquired interests in many other industries, notably coal. Mr. Reade was accorded a naval funeral at tho Hillsborough Cemetery, and eight men from the New Zealand station acted as pall-bearers. Official wreaths were sent from the Lords Commissioners of tho Admiralty, from the commanders, officers, and men of the ships of the New Zealand station, and from the Royal Naval School at Greenwich.