Robert Francis Jacob (1910-1989) was born in southern India where his father was an engineer to the Maharajah of Travancore. He moved to Ceylon in the 1930s to work as a tea planter and served in the Ceylon Planters Rifle Corps during the Second World War. After managing various estates, Jacob finished his career at Loinorn Estate in Bogawantalawa. An active member of the Planters Association of Ceylon, Jacob was a gifted amateur artist and taxidermist with a keen interest in birds. Jacob’s ladder, a steep hiking trail from Agrapatana to Bogawantalawa, is named after him. Jacob returned to England when the tea estates were nationalized in the 1960s.