Auction Catalogue

19 & 20 July 2017

Starting at 10:00 AM

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Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

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Lot

№ 199

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19 July 2017

Hammer Price:
£1,600

Five: Major B. G. Bromhead, Royal Berkshire Regiment, late Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry and South African Constabulary

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 2 clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State (Lieut. B. G. Bromhead. Thorneycroft’s M. I:); King’s South Africa 1901-02, 2 clasps (Lt. B. G. Bromhead, S.A.C.); 1914 Star, with clasp (Capt: B. G. Bromhead. R. Berks: R.); British War and Victory Medals (Major B. G. Bromhead.) mounted as worn, together with the related miniature awards, edge bruising to KSA and this re-pinned, light contact marks, generally very fine and better (5) £600-800

Benjamin Gonville Bromhead was born in 1876, the son of Colonel Sir Benjamin Parnell Bromhead, 4th Baronet Bromhead, and Hannah Smith, of Thurlby Hall, Lincs. He married Edith Maud Andrews, daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Robert Charles Andrews, on 30 April 1912.
He was commissioned in 1898 as Second Lieutenant, 3rd Battalion South Wales Borderers, and promoted Lieutenant in January 1900. He resigned his commission in April 1900, in order to serve during the Boer War, where he served as a Special Services Officer with the Rhodesia Field Force under General Carrington, on attachment to Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry from January 1901 to May 1902, and with ‘A’ Division, South African Constabulary. In 1907, he was serving in Ireland with a maxim-gun detachment and by 1911, he was stationed at Dover Castle, Dover, Kent with the 1st Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment. He served during the Great War with the 1st Battalion Royal Berkshire Regiment on the Western Front from 13 August 1914, and was severely wounded and sent home to recover at the Hon. Rosdew Burns’ Hospital for Officers, Stoodley Knowle, Torquay, in October 1914. He returned to France and was hospitalised on 26 June 1917 at Noyelles, returning to England in July 1917. He served with the 3rd Battalion Royal Berkshire Regiment in Dublin, Ireland, and after the Great War, retired to the half-pay list on account of ill-health contracted on active service in January 1922 and retired from the half-pay list in November 1924. died at Wellington House, Walmer, Kent, on 13 May 1939.

Benjamin Gonville Bromhead came from an extended and well connected Anglo-Irish military family: General Sir Gonville Bromhead (great grandfather, at Quebec with General Wolfe), Edmund de Gonville Bromhead (grandfather, lost an eye at Waterloo), Colonel Sir Benjamin Parnell Bromhead (father, Afghan and Sudan campaigns, lost right hand at Sikkim), Lieutenant Colonel Gonville Bromhead (uncle, 24th Foot, V.C. at Rorke’s Drift), Major Edward Gonville Bromhead (brother, died in 1910), Field Marshal Lord Birdwood (brother-in-law), Colonel Robert Benjamin Gonville Bromhead (son, the last Commanding officer of the Royal Berkshire Regiment in 1959) and Sir Benjamin Denis Bromhead (Indian Army) to name a few.

Sold with some research, including two copy photographs, one of a Maxim gun detachment in Ireland (Dublin) under the command of the recipient.