Julius Drewe

Julius Charles Hendicott Drewe (or Julius Drew; 4 April 1856 – 20 November 1931) was an English businessman, retailer and entrepreneur who founded Home and Colonial Stores, and who ordered the building of Castle Drogo in Devon. Origins Julius Charles Drew (he changed the spelling to Drewe in 1913) was born at the vicarage in Pulloxhill near Ampthill in Bedfordshire, the son of Rev. George Smith Drew (1819–1880), Rector of Avington, Winchester, by his wife Mary Peek, the eldest child of William Peek of Loddiswell, Devon and first cousin of Sir Henry William Peek, 1st Baronet (1825–1898) of Rousdon, Devon. Julius was the third youngest of eight children. His siblings Mary, Edith, Ada, Reginald, William, Anna and Evelyn all moved, either to different parts of the United Kingdom or to the Colonies, including British North America. He was the nephew of Richard Peek, a Sheriff of the City of London. Early origins Julius' father, Rev. George Smith Drew, was born 22 October 1818 in Kensington, then a village on the outskirts of London, to an affluent family. He was a clergyman and serial publisher. Julius' mother was Mary Peek, born 13 March 1821 in Islington. Julius' grandfather, George H. Drew, was born in Belgravia, in Westminster in 1790 but at the age of four moved with his parents to their country house in the South Hams, Devonshire. George moved back to London aged twenty-one and became a tea merchant during the birth of the Industrial Revolution. The Drew family had close ties with the French aristocracy in the eighteenth century by the lineage of King Louis XIII of France through his great-granddaughter. As a result of this, Thomas Drew (Julius' great-grandfather) was born 1745 in Gironde, France. Thomas later migrated back to England with his father at a young age, at some time before the outbreak of the French Revolution of 1789, and became an architect based in Sloane Street, Westminster. Life As a child he attended Bedford School between 1862 and 1874, a traditional private boarding school founded by King Edward VI. After leaving school at eighteen years of age, Julius started his working life as a tea buyer in China for his uncle Francis Peek (c.1836–99), a partner in Liverpool tea-merchants Peek and Winch. Julius’s great uncle, Richard Peek (1782–1867), one of the three brothers who founded Peek and Winch, was an abolitionist and philanthropist who was on the organising committee of the anti-slavery conventions held in London in 1840 and 1843.