Born on July 1853 in this house, Cecil Rhodes is the most famous son of Bishop’s Stortford. After attending the local grammar school he visited his brother in Natal, South Africa. It was here that Rhodes began to forge links with southern Africa that would make him one of the richest and most powerful men in the world. He invested in Diamond mines and after a brief period of study at Oriel College, Oxford, he returned to Africa to enter public life. After serving as a parliamentarian in South Africa he pursued his dream of creating British Colonies in Africa, governing Rhodesia, later to be renamed Zimbabwe and Zambia. On his death in 1902, much of his estate went to founding the Rhodes scholarship, which allows foreign students to study at Oxford. A plaque marks the room where Rhodes was born.