This great city of ours holds some incredible stories and none more so than the amazing tale of Colonel George Knox - the last of the Knoxes to live at Prehen.

Prehen House overlooking the River Foyle from the Waterside is a remarkable dwelling. On the outside it has a plain Georgian façade but inside a warm, welcoming atmosphere awaits you. Built by Andrew Knox back in 1740 it's a much lived-in place that's now been beautifully restored by the Peck family. But there's also a touch of melancholy in the air hereabouts for the tragedy of Mary Ann Knox, shot by her lover John McNaughten, found its roots within these walls.

My visit to Prehen on this occasion had nothing to do with that poor girl although she does appear briefly in our story. Rather, I was in search of another fascinating character Colonel George Knox - the last of the dynasty – who suddenly disappeared in the mid-1800s only to return with a collection of bizarre souvenirs that frightened the life out of Derry folk.

Born in 1832 George Knox spent his early childhood at Prehen and was a bright, lively, good-looking lad. From the outset he was brought up on tales of adventure. His father Andrew had fought at the battle of Waterloo (June 1815) and then spent years in the Punjab at the height of the Indian Raj. It's hardly a surprise then that George Knox was endowed with wanderlust.

As a child there was nothing he liked more than exploring the woods of Prehen, where the trees were said to be the last links with the ancient oaks of Derry. Incidentally, the word Prehen means place of the crows.
The Knox estate stretched all the way to New Buildings village, a distance of three miles, and the Colonel later recalled an extraordinary meeting he had when he was about ten years of age. One day he came upon the cottage of a former Knox family servant, the one hundred year-old David McCullagh, who had been a member of the coach party when Mary Ann Knox was killed in November 1761. Amazingly the old man was able to recount every aspect of the tragedy that had happened eighty years earlier.

George Knox inherited Prehen estate, with its fine house, the woods and 3600 acres of good land, when he was just thirteen in1845. A few years later he took up studies at Oxford, where he graduated in law. By all accounts he was a great socialiser and it seems he continued his party when he returned to the Derry. He also involved himself in many aspects of the day-to-day life of the city including the judiciary and the local militia, where eventually he reached the rank of colonel.

Disappearance
Yet his life was destined to change. From what we have learned George Knox, now in his early twenties, began to feel that his local duties were becoming too restricting – the parties were also beginning to lose their sparkle and more to the point they were becoming very expensive. His solution was quick and effective. Quite simply he vanished from Prehen. One day he was there, the next he was gone - leaving his mother to run the Prehen estate, and with no forwarding address.

George Knox had taken off on a voyage to the ends of the earth.
His friends and associates were bewildered by this sudden departure and there appeared to be no way of getting in touch with him. Many years afterwards Colonel Knox revealed that he took great steps to conceal his whereabouts from everyone back in Derry.

So where did he get to? We know from reports in the press after his death that George Knox travelled across the world, often residing for lengthy periods in some of the countries he visited. But apart from this, the whole episode has remained a mystery until the present day when further details have been uncovered at Prehen House. Gradually the jigsaw of Colonel's Knox's missing years is coming together piece by piece.

It seems that he planned an outward journey that would first take him to the far side of the globe. We know with reasonable certainty that he visited Australia, New Zealand, the Southern Pacific Ocean and countries bordering the China Seas. After this we find him in India, which was under the control of Britain at the time, and from the sub-continent we can trace him to Africa in the mid -1850s. We then find him in Algeria, so it would be reasonable to assume that he travelled across North Africa including Egypt.

Next on to Europe where we locate him at Neuchatel in Switzerland and discover that he weds Swiss girl Rose Grimm. The date is 1856 and he has fallen head over heels in love in his mid - twenties. It was a marriage that would last over four decades.

Surprise return
By the1860s George Knox was growing weary of travelling and after years of wandering decided it was time to return to Derry.

Now picture this. It is a day in late summer and a carriage followed by a lumbering horse–drawn wagon winds its way up the long avenue to Prehen House. Out steps none other than the weather-beaten George Knox - followed, so the family annals say, by three women.

Actually it was one woman and two young girls – to be precise Rose (Grimm) Knox and their two daughters Virgine and Augusta. The news spread through Derry like wildfire – disbelief would be a better description – the intrepid George Knox had returned to the fold just as suddenly as he had disappeared.

In time he took up his duties in the city again. He became the longest-serving member of the Workhouse Guardians, a member of the Derry Asylum Board and also a Deputy Lieutenant for Derry and Donegal. He took a leading role in the administration of law and order in the locality and also re-joined the Derry Militia.

Each Sunday morning the Knoxes would set out for Glendermott Church on their pony and trap – a three-mile journey. Colonel Knox was tall and took the outside end of the pew so he could stretch his legs into the aisle. It was said that during the minister's sermon he would leave the church and could be found outside cleaning the brasses on the pony and trap.

Yet there was still one special city George Knox wanted to see – Paris. In the spring of 1871 Paris was just coming to terms with the devastating consequences of a four month siege by Prussia. With summer approaching Knox set out from Derry and found the place in ruins - a scene of destruction and starvation. None the less he was still able to obtain keepsakes of the Paris siege and these joined his ever growing collection of mementos at Prehen.

After returning from Paris George Knox took up his civic duties in Derry once more. Yet his travelling was by no means over. George Knox could never stay still. He would spend part of every year in Europe especially at the ancient town of Weimar in Germany, where his daughter Virgine had married Professor Ludwig Von Scheffler.

George Knox loved to wander through the beautiful old streets of Weimar. Today it is one of Europe's great cultural sites and in past times was home to personalities such as Bach, Liszt, Schiller, Goethe and Nietzsche, the world-famous philosopher. As it happened Nietzsche, who met a sorry end, was a close friend of Von Scheffler and lived in the same street as the family. Incidentally, the Weimar library, said to be one of the finest and oldest in existence, lost many priceless volumes in a fire in 2004.

In time the Von Schefflers visited Prehen and came to play a leading role in the Knox story, especially their son George, who became the Colonel's favourite grandchild and heir to the entire estate of Prehen. This young man grew up as a page to Grand Duke Carl Alexander of Saxe-Weimar and later was attached to the court of Kaiser Bill the German Emperor.

It was in this latter role that the young Von Scheffler got to know the family of Queen Victoria and all the crown heads of Europe before World War I. It is also known that the twoVon Schefller daughters, Virgine and Augusta, even as youngsters, were popular figures at the court of the Kaiser.

Last Days
As for Colonel George Knox he lost his beloved wife Rose, who died in 1904. A light had well and truly gone out of his life and with it went his genial ways and great storytelling. He still continued to rise at six each morning to do his paperwork, which he did without glasses even at the ripe old age of seventy-eight.

Reports indicate that he did not like to be disturbed and became rather ill-tempered. In the evenings, even though he had a roaring fire in his study, he would ask his servants to pile books high around his chair to keep out the draughts.

A letter at Prehen House indicates that George Knox knew his end was approaching. He used a bedroom at the south side of the dwelling overlooking the River Foyle, but writing to his daughter Virgine at Weimar late in the summer of 1910 he says sadly –'My dear, you will know to come home when you hear that I have moved to your mother's old room…' He had been feeling unwell and did indeed move to this room in the autumn of that same year.

It was the beginning of the end. Colonel George Knox, the Derry man with the insatiable wanderlust - the last of the Knoxes - passed away on Sunday evening 22 November 1910.


The strange souvenirs of a wanderer
And what of the lumbering wagon that also pulled up outside the door of Prehen House when George Knox returned from his travels?

Gossip told of weird and wonderful things. And indeed its contents were astonishing to say the least, filled as it was all the bits and pieces that the Derry traveller had accumulated over his years of wandering.
You see George Knox couldn't resist relics of other countries and it seemed the odder the better.

His collection was described as being the envy of every museum in Ireland.

There was an assortment of shields and spears and ornamental daggers from the South Pacific, Sepoy drums from India, ancient duelling pistols, masks, headgear, tribal dresses from Africa, souvenirs of Napoleon III and, believe it or not, a crocodile's head.

But there was something else - something that shocked George Knox's friends when they came to call – his collection of Maori warrior heads. These were the shrunken tattooed heads of Maori warriors sometimes referred to as Moko.

They look gruesome and often seem to carry an unusual, spooky presence. George Knox obtained the warrior heads in New Zealand and put them into glass jars.

It seems in the beginning he had a shelf full of them although records say that in the end only one sat upon the mantelpiece in his study at Prehen.

It was of course a Derry talking point, and while many visitors to Prehen House were horrified others were curious, for the collecting of these tribal heads and other animal heads had become a fad throughout Europe by the mid-1800s.

Colonel George Knox made light of it, all preferring to recount his great adventures around the world. He was an accomplished raconteur.