Romford’s Catholic priest, Father Colomb, was sent to Greymouth on the South Island, where he drowned crossing a river in 1871.
After an Army career, Colonel Benjamin Branfill retired into poverty. His pension was small, his Upminster Hall estate yielded little income and he’d split from his “expensive and worldly” wife.
In 1880, he too took refuge in Nelson, choosing a place called Brook Street (perhaps it reminded him of home), where he started to build a replica of Upminster Hall.
An amateur painter, he supported himself giving art classes. In 2013, the Nelson Mail published an article – it’s online – about Branfill’s self-portrait of himself at the easel.