Ovapedia search :

Colonel Claude Edward Bateman-Champain retired from the Indian Army in October 1923 and came to live in Budleigh with his family in about 1928. He is listed in the town directory in 1930 living at Dunnock in Northview Road, and had moved to Wood End in Westfield Lane by 1939, where he remained until his death in 1956.

Claude was one of the six sons and two daughters of Colonel John Bateman-Champain KCMG (1,2) a British army officer and engineer in Bengal who was involved in actions to recapture Delhi and Lucknow during the Indian Mutiny. In 1865 he had returned to London to become Assistant to the Director of the Indo-European Telegraph Department, a branch of the British Government of India based in London. The same year he married Harriet Sophie Currie, born in Lahore, who was the eldest daughter of Sir Frederick Currie. Bateman-Champain was instrumental in laying the first electric telegraph line from Britain to India by way of the Persian Gulf (this was essential work as the British Government had been horrified at the length of time it took for the news to reach London that the Indian Mutiny had taken place). All their children were born in England (most in Richmond, Surrey).

Sir John died in 1887; Harriet survived her husband and died on 14 August 1905. After their father’s death, all of the children received a pension from the British India Army Pension Fund until they were 21. Claude, who was born on 30th March 1873, was entitled to receive £44 per annum until 29th March 1894.

Their mother moved the family to Cheltenham, and Claude, along with his five brothers, attended as day boys at Cheltenham College where they were all prominent members of the cricket team (3). He left school in 1892 to become a Queen’s India Cadet at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst where he was a member of the cricket team and was good enough to later play 18 times for Gloucestershire. After graduating he went to India and in October 1894 was appointed as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion 5th Gurkha Rifles stationed at Abbottabad. In 1895 they were in action with the Chitral Relief Force. He was promoted to Lieutenant in 1897. He served on the North-West Frontier and in 1902 took part in punitive operations against the Darwesh Khel Waziris. He was a double company officer from 1900 and was made adjutant of the battalion in 1902 after return from a year of leave in England. He was promoted to Captain in October 1903 and Major in October 1912.

At the outbreak of WW1 he was again on furlough in England and was briefly appointed second in command of the 9th Battalion of the Rifle Brigade. In February 1915 he was posted to France to join the 1st Battalion of the Gurkha Rifles (4). He was only with them for a few weeks because he was severely wounded in March at Neuve Chapelle and went into hospital. Neuve Chapelle was the first set-piece offensive battle undertaken by the British from static trenchlines and Gurkhas were in the first assault wave.

By December 1915 he had been passed fit for light duties and was appointed to the staff at General Headquarters in Egypt. In June 1916 he was back in India as Senior Supervising Officer with the Nepalese Contingent at Kakul and in the following month was appointed to a post at Northern Command, India. In November he was finally passed fit for active service and rejoined the 2nd Battalion 5th Gurkha Rifles in Mesopotamia. They helped removed the Ottomans from Hitt and were in action in March 1918 at Khan Baghdadi where the Indian Division, which included the 5th Gurkhas, took the entire Ottoman force of about 5000 men prisoner. Soon after the main Ottoman supply base at Ana was taken and that was the last action that the Indian Division undertook.  Claude became acting Lieutenant Colonel in January 1918 while he was in command of the Battalion. The Battalion left for India at the end of January 1919 and he was mentioned in dispatches and confirmed as Brevet Lieutenant Colonel for his services in Mesopotamia. After a staff post, he commanded the 2nd Battalion until his retirement in October 1923 having been promoted to Colonel in January.

Back in England in 1924 he was living with his elder brother Philip (vide infra) and his wife Ruth in Lydford, Devon; and in Barnstaple in 1926 Claude married Elsie Muriel Donne the eldest daughter of Walter Donne a wholesale tea and coffee merchant from London. It seems likely that the couple moved to Budleigh around or before 1928, probably to Dunnock in Northview Road. In January 1929 Claude was elected to the Committee of the Budleigh Salterton, East Budleigh and Otterton branch of the British Legion at a meeting held in the Feather’s Hotel (5). He was obviously determined to get involved in local affairs because in April 1929 he also joined the Budleigh Salterton Urban District Council (6) and retained the seat till he retired from the Council in 1938.

Disaster struck the family in December 1929 when a large gale hit the town and the roof of their house in Northview Road was demolished (7). By this time they had a daughter Philippa who had been born in Marylebone; Elsie’s parents were living in Marylebone, London, and it is likely that she went to her parents to have the child, and again in the summer of 1931 to have their second daughter, Vivienne.

In March 1930 a new Local Association was formed for Boy Scouts (8) and Colonel Bateman-Champain was elected President, (his time with the Gurkhas making him the perfect candidate). His sporting prowess would also have been useful being a good cricketer, and in addition he was a member of the East Devon Golf Club and played in several local and County tournaments throughout the 1930s. At some time during the 1930s the family moved into Wood End in Westfield Lane and appear there in the1939 census.

At the outbreak of WW2 Claude was too old to serve but appears to have volunteered to become a special constable. Most convictions were for showing a light at night and in September 1940 Sergeant C. E. Bateman-Champain had to give evidence against Colonel George Oliver of Vayne Upper Stoneborough Lane. This was a second offence and the defendant was fined £5 (9).

During her time in Budleigh Salterton Mrs Elsie Bateman-Champain was involved with several concerts as she was an accomplished violinist. In 1932 there was a concert at the Masonic Hall given by the church choir in aid of choir funds and Elsie “gave some delightful violin solos”. It seems that it was not unusual for there to be music at Women’s Institute meetings so we find her playing solos at a monthly meeting in March 1933. In June 1933 there was a recital of sacred music at All Saints’ Church in East Budleigh and she was one of the performers in front of a large audience. The £7 collected was added to the fund for the restoration of the exterior of the church. In May 1940 there was a concert at the Public Hall in aid of local war charities and the cricket club and Mrs Bateman-Champain led an orchestra which “played many enjoyable selections".

In May 1946 Claude was elected to the committee of the cricket club along with Major Palairet, Colonel Pepys, Major Palmer, Dr Gavin, and Messrs. Brown, W T Daniel, E Wilson, E J Fasharn, J Cooper and A Wilson – the last two being elected captain and vice-captain(10).

Their daughter Vivienne was involved in several tennis tournaments locally (11) and qualified as a nurse in 1954. In the spring of 1956 she married Leonard Weaver and in October of that year her father died in The Cottage Hospital; his wife stayed on at Wood End before moving to 11 Park Road Tunbridge Wells where she died in October 1971. Their other daughter Philippa eventually married in Eastbourne in 1983 to Bernard Hewitt.

Philip Bateman-Champain

During the course of this research I discovered that Claude’s older brother Philip also lived in Budleigh at Oak Lodge. Philip had joined the Royal Navy in 1889 and was posted to the corvette HMS Cordelia on the China Station. In 1892 he joined the battleships HMS Howe, on the channel station, transferring to HMS Edinburgh, then HMS Resolution, before joining the cruiser HMS Pallas on the American & West Indian Station. He was in command of the destroyer HMS Earnest in the Mediterranean 1901-1903 before being appointed to the Royal Naval College, Osborne. He was promoted to Commander in June 1906 and the next year took command of the cruiser HMS Hyacinth which carried the Commodore’s flag for the East India Squadron. He was back in Portsmouth briefly in command of the cruiser Terrible which was in reserve before he transferred to the battleship Caesar at Devonport for two years.

He was then put in charge of the boys' training ship HMS Impregnable at Devonport until August 1911. While at Devonport he married Helen Walker in June 1910 but she tragically died in the summer of 1911. I suspect he requested a move from Devonport because the next year he was put in command of HMS Tyne a depot ship for the 8th destroyer flotilla which was re-commissioned at Devonport in May 1912. He left the post in February 1919 (12). He retired at his own request with the rank of Captain (retired) in December 1919. In 1920 he re-married to Ruth Schafer (nee Hutchinson) the widow of a naval Commander who died when his ship hit a mine in 1918. She lived with Philip at Oak Lodge before moving after his death to Stratton in Cornwall. She had two sons from her first marriage, one following his father into the Navy and retiring as a Commander. She was brought back to Budleigh to be buried in the Burial Ground with her husband who had died in May 1958.

Researched by © Roger Lendon, March 2017

(1) “Distinguished Anglo-Indians” William F. B. Laurie – 1999
(2) “Dictionary of Indian Biography”
(3) Cheltenham College Register 1841 – 1927
(4) “History of the 5th Royal Gurkha Rifles: 1858 to 1928”   Colonel H. E. Weekes
(5) Western Times  11 January 1929
(6) Exeter and Plymouth Gazette 17 April 1929
(7) Exeter and Plymouth Gazette 10 December 1929
(8) Exeter and Plymouth Gazette 07 March 1930
(9) Express and Echo  17 May 1940
(10) Western Times 10 May 1946
(11) Western Morning News 12 August 1947
(12)  http://dreadnoughtproject.org/tfs/index.php/Philip_Agnew_Bateman-Champain#cite_note-5

Further sources for Claude included:  The London Gazette, Fibis.org (families in British India), Army Lists, Wikipedia, and Ancestry.co.uk.

Sources for Philip included: www.freebmd.org.uk/ for his birth death & marriages, and for his career – Navy Lists, Cheltenham Looker-On for 15 August 1914, & Wikipedia. Note - the Cheltenham Looker-On article says that he was taking up the post of Divisional Officer of Coastguard in Liverpool which differs from information in reference 12. I suspect that with the outbreak of WW1 he was retained in his more important post on HMS Tyne.

BS-B-00077 Biography