The Bostock family initially came to Ceylon in 1884 with the arrival of J H Bostock, the great grandfather of the current owners. He came to take up the position of Resident Engineer of harbour works in Colombo.
It was his son, Norman, who started the family estate. Although born in Horsham in Sussex, England Norman came to Ceylon soon after leaving college in 1910 but returned to England to serve in the South Stafford Regiment during World War I and was awarded the Military Cross. He returned to Ceylon in 1920.
During the 1920's Norman started buying land 3 miles north of Bandarawela together with A J Wickwar, the Surveyor-General. AJ bought his land on the right-hand side of the then Gansabawa path running from Bandarawela to Attampitiya and Norman bought land on the left-hand side. Norman called his estate Aislaby, after the village in Yorkshire where he proposed to his wife, Elizabeth ( they had a son, Mark, born in Ceylon in September 1926). AJ and Norman ran the two estates as one unit with a shared factory. The building of the factory had a somewhat unusual start (for those days) as Norman did not have the necessary capital to invest, so he appealed to the Board of Directors of the Colombo Commercial Company and asked them to consider building his factory and accept payment once the factory was producing tea!
In 1940 Norman returned to England but was turned down for active service, he finished the war as Lord Beaverbrook's assistant at the Air Military in London.
Norman once again returned to Ceylon in 1945 for 18 months during which time he met up with his son Mark when he was changing aircraft carriers. During this time together Norman and Mark purchased another small tea estate, Kirchhayn adjoining Aislaby at Bandarawela and also 350 acres of land in South India near Trivandrum, which was to become Greenham Estate.
Norman Bostock finaly left Ceylon in 1946 and retired to England where he died in 1970.
Mark was demobilised in 1947 and went straight to Aislaby Estate where he learnt tea planting for about a year and was assistant superintendent on Aislaby. He retired in 1986.
Mark Bostock was born in Ceylon in September 1926 and spent most of life there. He died in Sri Lanka in April 2000 and is survived by his wife, Elizabeth (Lif), who spends the majority of her time in Sussex, England. An elder daughter Gillian, married to Graham with two daughters Catherine and Alexandra, living in Kent, England and his younger daughter, Claire, married to Tony with two daughters, Olivia and Indiana, living in Sydney, Australia.
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