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Keeping memory of bravery alive

From the archive, first published Thursday 3rd Jan 2002.

In the oldest part of Belbroughton's Holy Trinity Churchyard an ancient monument pays tribute to one of the village's bravest men - General Sir Edward Woodgate.

And although he died more than a century ago, elderly villagers are keen to keep his memory alive.

That is why they were up in arms earlier in the year when a shiny new headstone - a memorial to businessman Percy Walters Dowell, of Bell Hall Estate, was put up in front of the crumbling old monument.

The monument, which was attacked in Cromwellian times, was restored exactly 100 years ago in 1901, in honour of General Sir Edward Robert Prevost Woodgate, who fell in the Boer War during the South African campaign of Spion Kop.

General Woodgate was born in Belbroughton in November 1845, the son of Rev Henry Arthur Woodgate, the rector of Holy Trinity Church.

A keen, rower, Edward left school at 15 to cram for the army. He passed into Sandhurst and out of it with a free commission to the King's Own, the Old 4th Foot in 1865. He went to India and served in Abyssinia in 1868 and the Ashantee War between 1873 and 1874.

He went on to enjoy a successful military career, which included serving in Abysinnia in 1868, the Ashantee War - 1873 and 1874, Zululand in 1879 and Sierra Leone in 1898, for which he was honoured with the CMG.

Edward was also made a Commander of the Bath in 1896 and later KCMG in January 1900, but his military triumphs would ultimately cost him his life.

He later took sick leave, sailed back to England and was seriously ill with fever. He had not fully regained his strength when the time came for his last South Africa campaign - The Boer War, which broke out in 1899.

On January 24 1900 Edward was seriously wounded. He suffered injury to the brain from a shattered eye orbit.

It is documented that while being carried down the hill to hospital, he struggled to rejoin his men and had to be restrained by force on the stretcher.

As a result of the injury Edward lost all recent memory and had no recollection of the war.

He later fell into a coma and died at Mooi River on March 23 1900, aged 54. He left a fiancée Gladys Newbolt.

General Woodgate was buried in Weston churchyard, South Africa, and the following year the old monument in Belbroughton churchyard was restored in his honour.

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