A Collection of Medals to Members of the Nobility and The Royal Household

Family Group:

Pair: Captain R. L. Barnard, Royal Engineers
British War and Victory Medals (Capt. R. L. Barnard.) BWM partially officially corrected, very fine

Three: Driver Eileen, the Honourable Mrs. Barnard, French Red Cross
British War and Victory Medals (E. Plunket.); France, Third Republic, Croix de Guerre, bronze, reverse dated ‘1914-1918’, with bronze star on riband, good very fine (5) £100-140

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Medals to Members of the Nobility and The Royal Household.

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Rowland Lionel Barnard, the son of Colonel W. A. M. Barnard, Grenadier Guards, served as Private Secretary to Lord Edward Cecil, Financial Advisor, Ministry of Finance, Cairo, Egypt. He served with the Royal Engineers in Egypt during the Great War from 6 August 1917, with the local rank of Captain. After the War he served as a Judge with the Jockey Club in Egypt.

Rowland Barnard married the Hon. Eileen Plunket, the daughter of the 5th Baron Plunket, on 12 October 1931, with whom he had one son and one daughter, and died on 23 October 1955.

Eileen Hermoine, The Honourable Mrs. Barnard was born Eileen Hermione Plunket in Ireland on 15 July 1896, the second daughter of the 5th Baron Plunket and his wife Lady Victoria, daughter of the 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava. She served during the Great War as a Driver with the Hackett-Lowther unit, attached to the French Red Cross, in France from July 1918, and was awarded the French Croix de Guerre. The Hackett-Lowther unit, founded in London in August 1917 by Norah Hackett and Toupie Lowther, was a private British women’s ambulance outfit, and served in France under the control of the French Third Army, the British Army refusing to have anything to do with them. They performed valuable work in transporting the wounded to and from evacuation hospitals and stations on the railways, driving by day and night wherever they were sent. Eileen Plunket served in the Hackett-Lowther unit alongside her “close friend” Miss Enid Elliot; indeed, ‘it seems likely that a significant number of women in the unit were lesbians- given Toupie Lowther’s arresting “masculine appearance”, it seems unlikely that women who had conventional views on sexual morality or the role of women in society would have wanted to join the unit.’ (A History of 20th Century Lesbians, by Emily Hamer refers). In 1931 she got engaged to Captain R. L. Barnard, which was reported in the newspapers under the heading ‘An Interesting Engagement’, and they married at Christ Church, Down Street, Mayfair, London, on 12 October 1931. Their honeymoon ‘consisted of a motoring trip to Trieste, from where they caught a boat to Cairo, arriving in time for the start of the racing season.’ She re-kindled her friendship with Miss Elliot in the 1930s, and died in 1966.