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These are three of the four sons of General Julius Goodwyn (1) all of whom followed military careers.  They all had associations with Budleigh Salterton in their youth and Julius and Walter had longer associations with the town.

Julius Henry Goodwyn O.B.E (1859-1945)

Julius was born in Jamaica on the 9th October 1859 (2) and shortly afterwards returned to England with his parents and his father’s regiment, the 41st (Welsh).  In the censuses of 1861 and 1871 they were, in barracks at Aldershot, and living in Ilfracombe respectively.  By 1881 Julius had left home to join his father’s regiment and was promoted from 2nd Lieutenant to Lieutenant on 1st December 1880 (3).  His father died in 1890 and Julius was living temporarily at Eastcliffe in Budleigh Salterton at the time of the 1891 census and by then had been promoted to Captain.  I suspect his father’s house (Stoneborough House) was being rented or Julius would have been living there.  In 1893 he is recorded as the occupier of Stoneborough (4).  He was adjutant of the 2nd volunteer battalion of the Welsh Regiment until 1st January 1895 (5).

Julius married Mildred Kathleen Studley in Beverley, Yorkshire in the summer of 1895. They had a son Julius Norton Goodwyn, born in Budleigh Salterton at the end of 1899. In March 1890 Julius was promoted to Major (6) and later was posted to India; his daughter Marjory Heather was born there in about 1903.  By 1911 Julius had retired from the army and was living at Kersbrook Cottage, and he was still there in 1919 (4). At the start of the 1914-18 war he was assistant records officer with the Devonshire Regiment in Exeter and, because of his age, probably had a desk job throughout the conflict as there is no record of him receiving campaign medals on the Public Records Office website.

He died at Kersbrook Cottage at the age of 85 in February 1945 and is buried in Budleigh Salterton Cemetery along with his wife Mildred (died February 1941), and only daughter Heather who had died in April 1931(2).  In 1928 his son Julius Norton married Marion Edwina Drummond who was the daughter of Brig.-Gen. Sir Hugh Henry John Drummond and Gertrude Emily Rolle, daughter of the Hon. Mark Rolle of Bicton (7). 

Norton James Goodwyn D.S.O. (1861–1906)

Born 7 October 1861 at Freshwater, Isle of Wight, he was living with his parents at Stoneborough House in Budleigh Salterton in 1881.  Shortly thereafter in September 1882 he joined the Devonshire Regiment as a Lieutenant and was promoted Captain in April 1891.  He served with his regiment in the Irrawaddy Column during the Burmese Expedition 1891-2.  He was adjutant of the Regiment from 17 October 1892 till the 5th April 1894 and was then employed with the Egyptian Army till 29th February 1896.  

He was sent on special service in Sierra Leone attached to the West African Regiment from April 1898 to June 1899 where he took part in the Mendiland Expedition. He captured the rebel chief Bai Bureh in November 1898(8).  Bai Bureh (1840–1908) was a Sierra Leonean ruler and military strategist who led the Temne uprising against British rule in 1898 in Northern Sierra Leone.  He was finally tracked down in swampy, thickly vegetated countryside by a small patrolling party (presumably led by Goodwyn) of the West African Regiment near Port Loko.  Bai Bureh’s Temne warriors resisted to the last, but they could not evade the troops for long and Bureh was taken under guard to Freetown (9).

For this, and other exploits in Sierra Leone, Goodwyn was awarded the D.S.O. in 1900 (10).  While in Sierra Leone he also took part in the Karene and Protectorate Expeditions.

He next served with the 2nd battalion of the Devonshire Regiment in operations in Natal during the Anglo Boer War, 1899-1900, up till the Battle of Colensa where he was seriously wounded; afterwards he was appointed second in command to Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry “in which he served with much distinction until the end of the war” (8).  He made a brief return to England by boat in the summer of 1900 to drop off  the wounded from his regiment before returning to South Africa.

He was given the brevet of Lieutenant-Colonel and promoted to Major in 1902 .  The regiment travelled to India in January of that year going to Shahjahanpur in the United Provinces for a tour of duty.  Goodwyn did not travel with them immediately (11). He was appointed Inspector of Gymnasia in India in 1904.

He died of typhoid at Sydney, Australia on the 6th May 1906 when on leave from India. His wife remarried in June 1907 in Penang to Mr Gordon Hart, advisor to the Kedah Government in Malaya (12).

Walter Meredith Goodwyn (1872-1939)

The youngest son of General Julius Goodwyn was born at Ilfracombe in 1872 and is found in both the 1881 and 1891 census in Budleigh Salterton, at the family home (Stoneborough House), and as a visitor at 1 Marine Parade respectively.  Walter joined the Devonshire Regiment and had attained the rank of Captain by 24th February 1900. In 1911 he was still a Captain and was with the 1st battalion of the Regiment in Lucknow Barracks, Tidworth Camp.  This was the station for members of the Regiment destined for service in Jersey (13). 

By the outbreak of World War 1 Walter had been promoted to Major and was with the 2nd battalion of the regiment when it joined with eleven other units in Hursley Park in Hampshire during September and October 1914 to form 23rd Brigade, Infantry Division. On the 5th November they marched off and embarked for France and were soon in the trenches near Neuve Eglise (14, 15).  He was back with the 1st battalion in May 1915 but after a short stay was transferred to command the 2nd Cheshires.  Because of the high casualty rate he was transferred several times, being back with 1st battalion Devonshire in 1916 during the Somme campaign but was moved in August to command the 2nd Manchesters in the Maricourt Wood sector.  From his medal card at the Public Records Office he was apparently also for a while a temporary Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the 16th West Yorkshire Regiment.

After the war in July 1919 the remains of the 1st battalion and the 3rd battalion were combined and after a short stay in Sunderland they returned to Raglan Barracks at Devonport and Major Goodwyn assumed temporary command until mid January 1920. He was then posted as Lieutenant Colonel to replace the C.O. of the 2nd Battalion which was at Quetta on the North West frontier of India (now Pakistan).  This garrison was a protective measure because the short 3rd Afghan War had started in May 1919. Goodwyn returned home on June 22nd 1920.

He married Anne E. Harper in early 1938 in Marylebone, Middlesex (7), and they lived at New Haven, Boucher Road, Budleigh Salterton.  His wife continued to live there after his death in the spring of 1939 at the age of 67.

Compiled and researched by Roger Lendon © 2009.

(1)General Julius Goodwyn OVApedia entry.

(2)Budleigh Salterton Cemetery Index (but birth year one year out).

(3)The London Gazette February 1st 1881

(4)Kelly’s Directory

(5)The London Gazette January 22nd 1895

(6)The London Gazette April 3rd 1900         

(7)freebmd.rootsweb.com

(8)East Budleigh Memorial Tablet

(9)Wikipedia

(10) The London Gazette April 3rd 1900

(11) The Record of a Regiment of the Line Col. M. Jacson, Hutchinson, London 1908

(12)  The Straits Times June 10 1907

(13)  1911 Army List

(14)  The Devonshire Regiment 1914-1918 C.T.Atkinson, Elland Bros., Exeter 1926

(15)  The Bloody Eleventh: History of the Devonshire Regimen, Vol.3.  W.J.P.Aggett, Exeter 1995

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