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Herbert John Ouchterlony Walker was resident at Lee Ford from about 1888 through until his death in 1934 (1).  He was born in 1843 in Switzerland the second son of James Ouchterlony Walker and his wife Jane.  His father was a railway and bank director in the East India Company, being involved with the Madras Railway at the time that Herbert was a young boy.  Herbert was educated privately and at Rugby School (2) and took the entrance exam for the Royal Military Academy in 1861 and did enough to pass without excelling (3).  

In June 1864, described as a “gentleman cadet”, he was appointed as a Lieutenant in the 6th Brigade Royal Artillery (3).  The Brigade came back from duty in Malta and the Ionian Islands in August of that year so possibly he didn’t join up with them till then; the 6th Brigade also supplied men to several home stations between September 1861 and September 1864.  The Brigade was at the Gun Wharf Barracks in Portsmouth in 1868 and then stationed in India at Mhow and Bombay between 1869 and 1874 and as Herbert cannot be found in the 1871 census it is likely that he was with them. 

In 1877 he was promoted to Captain and moved to the 9th Brigade Royal Artillery.  In late 1878 he married Ethel Ironside Bax in Kingsclere.  By the time of the 1881 census they were living with two children in Plumstead close to Woolwich where he was in charge of the Woolwich Remount Establishment (2,5).  This was a holding establishment for horses needed as replacements for the Artillery, Engineers and Cavalry.  This Establishment was usually run by a Staff Captain and in September 1883 Herbert was promoted to Major and a year later he was given a post which seems to be one given to an officer near the end of his career – he was appointed as “Captain of a Company of Gentleman Cadets” to replace Colonel Harness C.B.(4). 

He retired in December 1887 as a Major but was given the honorary rank of Lieutenant Colonel.  He was still on the reserve list in 1888.  In the 1891 census for Lee Ford we find him with his wife Ethel and two daughters, (Helen) Iris aged 11, Olive Muriel apparently called Mina (aged 8), and son Gilbert (aged 10).  All three of these children had been born in Plumstead between autumn 1879 and autumn 1883. The 1901 census shows the three children still at home.  Helen married Arthur Champerknowne who owned Dartington Hall in 1907, and Olive married Captain Richard Vigors DSO in 1911 at All Souls’ Marylebone.  Gilbert became a civil engineer. 

Colonel Walker seems to have kept and had a great interest in bees, and he was recruited as a judge for the “hives and honey” section of the Royal Agricultural Society’s shows.  He had an extensive library on the subject.  He purchased his first book in 1886 (6) and in 1890 he had acquired a major collection of books on the death of Alfred Neighbour a beekeeping entrepreneur who had a beekeeping supply business located at 149 Regent Street in London.  Walker added to this nucleus, and in 1929 produced a detailed Catalogue of the books, pamphlets and Journals (7).  He sold the whole collection to the Dr Miller Memorial Library at the University of Wisconsin in 1930(8).  

He was a member of the Naval and Military Club, and appears also to have been a Justice of the Peace (9). 

He died at Lee Ford on January 14th 1934 at the age of 90, his wife having pre-deceased him in 1923 at the age of 70. 

Researched and Compiled by Roger Lendon, © 2012 

(1)Censuses & Town Directories.

(2)Rugby School Register.

(3)Report on the examination for admission to the Royal Military Academy 1861.

(4)London Gazette.

(5)Army List 1881.

(6)Antiquarian Book Monthly Vol. 22, 1995.

(7)Catalogue of bee books collected and offered for sale by Col. HJO Walker 1929.

(8)American Bee Journal Vol. 73-74.

(9)Kelly’s Handbook 1901 (this entry is ambiguous as his son in law was definitely a J.P.)

145 BS-B-00057 Biography any