Sir Walter Gilbey

Wine merchant, born in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, SE England, UK. He was founder of a well-known wine company, a horse-breeder, and an agriculturist.

He was born at Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire to parents Henry and Elizabeth Gilbey. His father, the owner (and frequently the driver) of the daily coach between Bishop's Stortford and London, died when he was eleven years old, and young Gilbey was shortly afterwards placed in the office of an estate agent at Tring, subsequently obtaining a clerkship in a firm of parliamentary agents in London.

On the outbreak of the Crimean War, Walter Gilbey and his younger brother, Alfred, volunteered for civilian service at the front, and were employed at a convalescent hospital on the Dardanelles. Returning to London on the declaration of peace, Walter and Alfred Gilbey, on the advice of their eldest brother, Henry Gilbey, a wholesale wine-merchant, started in the retail wine and spirit trade. Henry Gilbey was of opinion that these classes would gladly drink wine if they could get it at a moderate price, and by his advice Walter and Alired determined to push the sales of colonial, and particularly of Cape, wines, on which the duty was comparatively light. Backed by capital obtained through Henry Gilbey, they accordingly opened in 1857 a small retail business in a basement in Oxford Street, London. The grocer who dealt in the Gilbeys wines and spirits was not allowed to sell those of any other firm, and the Gilbeys in return handed over to him all their existing customers in his district. This arrangement was of mutual advantage, and the Gilbeys business increased so rapidly that, in 1864, Henry Gilbey abandoned his own undertaking to join his brothers. In 1893 the business was converted, for family reasons, into a private limited liability company, of which Walter Gilbey, who in the same year was created a baronet, was chairman.

Sir Walter Gilbey also became well known as a breeder of shire horses, and he did much to improve the breed of English horses (other than race-horses) generally, and wrote extensively on the subject. He became president of the Shire Horse Society, of the Hackney Horse Society, and of the Hunters Improvement Society, and he was the founder and chairman of the London Cart Horse Parade Society.