TOPIC:

Elsewhere I reported on the military presence in Natal shortly after it became a British Colony in 1843:
www.angloboerwar.com/forum/fw-memorials/...bushman-s-post-river

I have now expanded on that report:

In 1847, an inn and trading store were established near a ford on the Bushman’s River in the midlands of the recently proclaimed British Colony of Natal. It was followed by an outpost for the military garrison occupying Fort Napier in Pietermaritzburg. On page 168 in Colonel P H Dalbiac’s 1902 history of the 45th Nottinghamshire Regiment (Sherwood Foresters), this step was recorded as follows:
“In February, 1848, Major Cooper was detached to form a permanent post on [the] Bushman’s River, with the following forces under his command: 140 men of the 45th (including a mounted troop under Captain Parish), a detachment of the Royal Artillery, and a detachment of the Cape Mounted Rifles.” A smaller permanent presence at the post followed. In some accounts of the Frontier Wars this post has been mistakenly linked to another Bushman’s River in the Eastern Cape.
It was from these small beginnings that the town of Estcourt developed.
It is widely believed that Bushman’s River Post was situated on a rocky hill east of the river overlooking the ford, and that later in 1874, after the alarms of the Langalibalele Rebellion, it became the site of Fort Durnford, a substantial building of local sandstone, which was an important military base in the Anglo-Zulu War (1879), in both Anglo-Boer Wars (1880-81 & 1899-1902), and in the Natal Rebellion (1906). It is still in use today as a museum.
There are reasons to doubt the rocky hill location for what must have been the large tented camp of Bushman’s River Post. It was far more likely to have been sited on flat land with deep soil on the eastern bank of the river, where it would have had easy access to water, the road and the embryonic settlement on the western side of the ford. It was on this flat land that the Borough of Estcourt later developed the cricket oval of the Lambert Park sports field, which is still in use, and which has been extended in both directions alongside the river.
A further indication pointing to this area comes from the location of Estcourt’s military cemetery, which was between Lambert Park cricket oval and New Weir, which in turn is immediately upstream from the confluence of the Bushman’s and Little Bushman’s Rivers. This cemetery evidently had its beginnings in 1848 when Private John Ashton of the 45th Regiment was buried there after drowning in the river on 20 July 1848. Most of the other graves in this cemetery dated from the 2nd Anglo-Boer War.
The cemetery was closed in 1963 and replaced by a Garden of Remembrance sited on high ground on the opposite side of the river overlooking Lambert Park. The Garden is centred on an elaborate memorial with plaques bearing nearly 150 names and regiments of men who died during the 2nd Anglo-Boer War at Estcourt, and at General Buller’s headquarters camp in Frere.
Also interred there are “Privates Norton, W Burgess, Wm Molloy and 47 other unknown brave British soldiers”. These men are likely to have been buried in the Estcourt military cemetery between 1848 and the start of the 2nd Anglo-Boer War in 1899, and their grave markers with their regimental affiliations and dates of death were lost through neglect.
Private Ashton was not forgotten during the move and his name appears on a kerbstone at the edge of the Garden. This insignificant memorial is probably often unnoticed, and the reason for Ashton’s presence at Estcourt in 1848 is likely to be largely unknown.



Brett Hendey
27 December 2020

Private Ashton's memorial.

Two photographs of graves in the Estcourt military cemetery that I took in the mid-1950s using my mother's Box Brownie camera. They were resurrected by my son Michael. They show the graves before and after a Spring clean. As far as I know none of the crosses were saved after the cemetery was closed in 1963.

Fabulous Brett. Thank you.

RobM