A life of art and conservation for Jeremy Waller, owner of Primavera, follows turmoil of kidnapping and violence

Well-known in Cambridge for his non-profit art gallery Primavera, Jeremy Waller has led an extraordinary life, which has included being kidnapped in Lebanon, being flung into the air by a checkpoint explosion and overseeing extraordinary engineering projects in East Africa.

Such drama might seem a far cry from his work at the King’s Parade gallery, or indeed his other gallery at his home on College Farm, Haddenham.

But his experiences around the world have helped shape his passions, informing the sculptures on his land, prompting his intriguing rewilding project and influencing his decision to support Haddenham Steam Rally with his wife, Sheila, for many years.

“The land of College Farm used to be owned by Gonville & Caius College, hence being called College Farm,” explains Jeremy.

“Most of the farm had been sold off before, but we wouldn’t have bought it if it hadn’t been for the steam rally, which we’re very interested in.”

Without their support, the steam rally could not exist, as all the parking for visitors to pay to visit is on their land.

“We’re interested in preserving British craft – whether it is to do with old machines, tractors and steam engines and so on, or indeed contemporary art. I’m an engineer myself, designer and artist.”

Jeremy was offered a place at St Martin’s College in London to study art but turned it down to read history at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

He went on to work for the company Hawker Siddeley, which made the famous Harrier jump jet.

“They owned a company called Petters and they made the most beautiful engines,” recalls Jeremy, “and I was based there, hence my interest in engines.”

He worked there as an accountant, pricing engine products, before moving on to another accountancy role at Olympus Corporation of Asia Pacific, where he supported the work of renowned photographer David Bailey.

He then spent three years at Babcock & Wilcox, which made turbines and engines for submarines, before a move to become finance manager at Otis Elevator Company took him to Lebanon.

“I went out to Beirut during the civil war and I witnessed the Israeli invasion,” remembers Jeremy. “I was there for a long time. We were making things out in the Lebanon and I travelled through Syria.”

It was in Lebanon that Jeremy was kidnapped.

“I was beaten up quite severely by a terrorist group and then taken away and incarcerated,” he says.

“But I was fortunate because I knew quite a lot of people in the Lebanon, I knew people from all the different military sides.

“At that time, the Syrians were in power over the Lebanon. Syria used to own the Lebanon, that was all part of their empire, called the Assyrian Empire.

“So the Syrians were there, and on the part that they controlled, you had Palestinian camps and you had different groups of Shias and Sunnis.

“They were all mixed in together. It was a Palestinian group that took me but I knew the Syrian commander and he managed to free me.”

Incredibly, this terrifying kidnapping resulted from Jeremy driving through a large puddle and accidentally splashing a car which had its windows open, while there were five people inside.

“They were not pleased so they followed me,” he says, “and did as you see in films: they stopped my car and they all got out. Luckily they didn’t shoot me up, or shoot the car up but took me instead, having beaten me up.

“It was a chance thing. When you look back on it, it’s quite funny that this happened.”

And it was not his only close shave while in Lebanon, where he was also ‘blown up’ – in a literal sense – by the force of a bomb.

“Yes, I was blown up about three and a half metres high,” he confirms. “I didn’t hear anything. It was extraordinary.

“There was just this wind and you’re up in the air, a bit like a kite, and then I came right down. Luckily, I wasn’t injured.

“There were lots of lorry bombs and car bombs at that time, as there still are unfortunately in Beirut and Lebanon.

“This particular lorry had been parked by a checkpoint, in this case a Shiite checkpoint, to blow up the checkpoint, which they did.

“But between the checkpoint and where I was were a lot of trees so they took the shrapnel. It was the force of the explosion that threw me up in the air.

“I was in that case just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And in that period of time I was shot at too...

“I used to travel all the way through Lebanon, right down to the Israeli border, and right up north through a place called Tripoli, where there was another Palestinian camp, and then travel all through Syria, to Damascus, during the war.”

During his time in the region, he saw the arrival of Israeli parachutists at close quarters when Israel invaded, being confronted by a squad of paratroopers who had arrived to take the Baabda Presidential Palace.

He then witnessed the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps, which took place from 16-18 September, 1982.

Between 1,300 and 3,500 civilians, mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias, were killed during the Lebanese Civil War by Lebanese militia, backed by the Israeli army.

Jeremy says of the period: “Surviving to tell the tale is part of the motivation of why I do things.

“However there were positive things – working with different racial groupings and finding common accord, and travelling through the most amazing countryside and in Syria, dotted with Crusader castles and, in Baalbek, seeing an outstanding Roman temple.”

From the chaos of Lebanon, Jeremy moved to Paris as a manager for Otis Elevator, travelling to European factories and HQs in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. It was in Paris that he met his wife.

A move to Nairobi, Kenya, followed in 1985, and Jeremy spent the next 10 years in Africa, becoming managing director and owner of the company, which was renamed East African Elevator Company.

“I looked after the engineering business from Ethiopia right down to Rwanda and Burundi – all that bit of East Africa,” he says.

“We also looked after Uganda and Zambia, which was the Copperbelt. On the Copperbelt we installed a lift, and it’s the tallest of its kind in the world, at a dam called Kafue Gorge.”

He helped double the size of the company as it designed and installed lifts and escalators in locations including the Dar-es-Salaam and Mombasa airports, the Hilton Addis Ababa, and hospitals in Kenya and Uganda.

He was responsible for ensuring the day-to-day servicing of 750 sophisticated lifts and escalators at a time when there was unreliable electrical power and communications, and insufficient human resources and equipment.

It was also a time of political turmoil and bloodshed in the region – coming a few years after the murderous rule of the brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, and amid the war of independence fought by Eritrea against Ethiopia, the Somali Civil War and the Battle of Mogadishu.

It was in September 1997 that Jeremy moved to Cambridge, as owner and CEO of First Edition Translations, a company offering translation, editorial and interpreting services to national and international clients.

He ran it for 19 years, before identifying a successor and negotiating the sale of the business.

Two years later he purchased Primavera in King’s Parade from its previous owner, Ronald Pile (the gallery was founded by Henry Rothschild in 1945 on the site where James Joyce recorded Finnegans Wake and where Charles Lamb and his sister Mary lived).

The gallery houses an incredible variety of art, from celebrated French painter Édouard Manet to Bath-based sculptor Peter Hayes and Cambridge-born Anthony Stern, an experimental filmmaker and glass maker who studied at Cambridge and who was friends with Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett.

A cruciform combrooch from around 700AD – one of only three in the world – can be found, along with an original from the studio of Caravaggio.

Art from prehistoric, Celtic, Roman, and Anglo-Saxon times mix with pieces from the modern day. There are about 300 artists represented and, astonishingly, about 14,000 pieces over three floors.

And as an independent, non-profit gallery, Primavera is highly supportive of British artists.

“The door is open on King’s Parade, and that’s to anyone who wants to come,” says Jeremy, who says his work there is about “giving something back”.

“I know you read this in papers, don’t you, but it’s true. There needs to be a motive. Primavera is a lot of work and the steam rally is a lot of work.”

It has been 25 years since he bought the gallery, which followed about 16 years spent living abroad.

“I’ve invested more of my life in Primavera and this rally than I have in what I did out in Africa, the Middle East and France,” he notes.

Jeremy has also spent 30 years as a member of Rotary, in Africa and now in Cambridge.

Jeremy and Sheila acquired College Farm in 2007, moving from their house at 9 3/4 Trumpington Road, Cambridge, which he designed and built.

He is also setting up an arts centre at College Farm, to allow artists and designers like himself to immerse themselves in the Fens and to create.

He is looking for people to invest further in the project and to be involved in its future.

His latest sculpture has just been installed on site.

“If you could imagine a setting sun with this big hoop – it’s 17 metres long and about three and a half metres high, and it has a huge buzzard on the top.”

The buzzard is a nod to another of Jeremy’s passions – conservation.

“We work very hard on using this land for rewilding purposes,” explains Jeremy.

“Doing what we’ve done, we have now got barn owls that live on the land – and they had a brood of four baby barn owls this year, which is quite special.

“We have roe deer. We have the usual things like badgers and pheasants and partridges. We have tawny owls, a buzzard and we have red kites – we had six kites the other day.

“All of this just would not be possible if we weren’t doing what we do. We planted about 1,400 trees. That’s part of what we’ve done, and we do it ourselves.”

It seems Jeremy’s determination to create – and promote others to do the same – has only been deepened by the chaos and destruction he has witnessed around the world.

It is a life story as remarkable and varied as the art that adorns his galleries.

Jeremy would like to invite any working business, academic or professional person based in or near Cambridge as his guest to the next – and monthly – breakfast meeting of The Rotary Club of Cambridge on Tuesday, 8 October, at 7.30am sharp at the Gonviille Hotel.

It would be a way for people to understand a little bit about what they do – including things like like Bridge the Gap and the funding of ambulances for Ukraine – at a convenient time before work.

Contact Jeremy at jeremyprimavera@aol.com. For more on Primavera, visit primaveragallery.co.uk.

For more on the Haddenham Steam Rally, which next year celebrates its 50th anniversary, go to haddenhamsteamrally.co.uk.