Angela Trueb (nee Clement-Davies, 1918 - 1991) never knew her father, Vincent, who died aboard the SS Umgeni

which was torpedoed in the Irish Sea in November 1917. Her mother Claudia remarried LP Kent, the creator of Kent

coffee, in 1920 and she and young Angela joined him at his South Indian coffee estate Doddengudda that year.

The family returned to Somerset in 1926 when Angela was eight, and Angela and her mother remained there until the

end of the Second World War, whilst LP Kent divided his time between Somerset and India, managing the estate at

Doddengudda.

During the war years Angela served as a WREN officer, working as a radio mechanic on Supermarine Seafires. The

family reunited in India at Doddengudda in 1946 when Angela was 28.

In 1952 at the Chikmagalur Club Angela met Hans Trueb, a Swiss coffee planter working for Volkart Brothers, and they married in Bangalore later that year. They settled at the Lowlands Bungalow in Mangalore where Hans managed the

Volkart Brothers coffee curing plant. The family divided their time between Mangalore and the growing of coffee on the company estates near Mysore, where in 1955 their daughter Claudia was born, followed in 1958 by son Paul.

Initially inspired by her mother, between 1946 and 1967 Angela developed a passionate interest in the religious sculpture and art of India, researching and travelling widely and visiting temple sites, and in common with many of the British expat community, collecting pieces offered by travelling traders passing through Mangalore.

In 1967 Volkart Brothers withdrew from South India, and the whole family together with Angela’s collection, returned to their newly completed home in Somerset. Having been educated in India until the family’s return, her daughter Claudia then went to school in Switzerland and son Paul to school in England. Hans joined international food company Nestle.

Angela’s Indian collection has remained at the Somerset home, now occupied by her daughter Claudia Burn and her family, since 1967.

Written by a close family member