Image: PNT-00015 > Anonymous, Kyrenia, Watercolour, 24 x 20 cm, 1920.
When he first came to Kyrenia and bought the wonderful house on the harbour from Shakallis, Colonel Sir Courtney Manifold was much disturbed by the call to prayer by the hodja from the Jafer Djami minaret. He offered the Turks of Kyrenia £500 to demolish the djami and build a new one further away from his home.
Colonel Manifold had taken part in the Boxer uprising in 1900 and word had it that the treasures in his house were loot from those days.
His first wife came from a wealthy family who owned sugar cane plantations in the Caribbean. She claimed she was a reincarnation of Josephine, Napoleon’s first wife. She was buried with her husband in Kyrenia.
Their house contained a large number of Napoleonic memorabilia including a gold throne on which Napoleon sat when he received the princes of Milan. When Lady Manifold died, they found 700-800 pairs of shoes and the same number of gloves!
The then eighty-year-old Manifold married his nurse. Everybody admitted that in his last days he looked wrinkled like a mandarin, perhaps he wanted to follow his wife’s example and adopt a new identity.
© Costas and Rita Severis Foundation
The ‘Did You Know’ series is made possible with the support of OPAP (Cyprus).
