Kemnal Road, Chislehurst

Henry Tiarks, 1900-1995

Henry Frederic Tiarks’ eponymous grandson was born in September 1900, in Kemnal Road, where he was to live for the next thirty or so years and more until he moved to London. He had been carefully groomed for a career at Schröders by his father. Despite being offered a place at Magdalen College Oxford, Henry took a course in accountancy and worked in The Hague for a year. He, together with Bruno Schröder’s son, who was admitted to partnership on the same day, spent time in Hamburg, Barcelona, New York and Latin America. Henry became a partner on 1st January 1926, and his father was able to introduce him on his first day to many leading City figures of the time.

He and his father shared an intense love for polo, which they indulged at Foxbury, playing together on the Foxbury team. In her book, ‘A Chance to Live’, Henry’s daughter Henrietta, recalls her father. He ‘had a wonderful life as a young man. He used to play polo after the City every night. It took him twelve minutes by car from the City to Foxbury.’

Henry and Lady Millicent Taylour
Henry and Lady Millicent Taylour

Henry’s first marriage, to Lady Millicent Taylour, was not a happy one, and it ended after their only son, Christopher, died of meningitis before his second birthday. Some years later Henry married Joan Barry, a famous actress, whose stage name was based on that of J.M.Barrie, the author of Peter Pan.

Henry and Joan on horseback
Henry and Joan Barrie

At the start of the war in 1939, Henry was called up to the Air Force, serving as a Wing Commander responsible for flying barrage balloons. In August 1943 he contracted tuberculosis, and spent a year recuperating.

Henry returned to the Schröders partnership after the war, and acted as deputy senior partner until 1948, but he did not assume a full burden of executive responsibilities as his father and grandfather had done, and he pursued a wide range of interests in addition to merchant banking. At the beginning of the 1950s he considered moving to New York to assume a senior position in the Wall Street banking firm in which the Tiarks family still had a substantial shareholding. But he remained in London and made a contribution through the cultivation of client relationships, especially with American Railway, Pressed Steel, Joseph Lucas and Securicor, of which he was a founder, and by representing Schröders at home and abroad. He  was a director of the Bank of London and South America and was an active ambassador on its behalf. Moreover, at the request of the President of the Board of Trade, he acted as deputy leader of a number of Dollar Export Trade Mission delegations, which promoted British exports to North and South America.

Many new partners were admitted to the Schröders’ partnership after the war, but their status was affected by the unresolved financial issue of the Tiarks, following the effects of the Standstill Agreement and losses in the 1930s. To resolve the issue, Henry finally agreed a settlement in respect of his father’s and his own interest in the goodwill of the old partnership. Henry continued to play a part in the business in the UK and around the world until his retirement in 1965 when he became a non-executive director.

He later moved to Marbella in Spain, where he had telescopes installed in his house. He was the longest living member of the Royal Astronomical Society, having been admitted in 1916. Having seen Halley’s Comet as an 11-year old boy with his grandmother Agnes, and he was determined to see it on its next return, and did so in 1986. Henry died in July 1995.

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