John Tremayne (with orthopaedic shoe)

John Tremayne (1825-1900) of Heligan, Mevagissy, Cornwall, son of John Hearle Tremayne and Caroline née Lemon. [Heligan House, meaning ‘the willows’ in Cornish, has been the seat of the Tremayne family since William Tremayne built the house in 1603. Its magnificent 'Lost Gardens' have recently been the subject of an extensive restoration project.] According to Bateman's Great Landowners of Great Britain and Ireland (4th edition, 1883), John Tremayne owned 5316 acres in Cornwall with a gross annual value £9137 and a further 5951 acres in Devon with a gross annual value of £4860.

John Tremayne was born in the parish of St. Martin in Fields [London] in 1825. On 13 November 1860 he married Hon. Mary Charlotte Martha Vivian, daughter of Charles Crespigny Vivian, 2nd Baron Vivian, and his second wife, Mary Elizabeth Panton. The Hon. Mary Charlotte Martha Vivian was born in 1842 in Plas Gwyn, Pentraeth, Anglesey, North Wales.

The couple had two sons, Perys Edmund (born 1866, died 1867), and John Claude Lewis (born 1869); and three daughters.

In 1859 John Tremayne was High Sheriff for the County. He appears on the 1861 census staying, with his wife, at the house of his father-in-law, Charles Crespigny Vivian, 2nd Baron Vivian. He gave his profession as 'Deputy Lieutenant and Magistrate of Cornwall and Devonshire'.

From 1874 to 1880 he was the Member of Parliament for Cornwall (East) and from 1884 to 1885, he stood for South Devon.

John Tremayne died on 8 April 1901, at the age of 75.

Photographed by Camille Silvy on 25 October 1860.