Edward Woodgate

Major General Sir Edward Robert Prevost Woodgate, KCMG, CB, (November 1845-23 March 1900) was a British Army Officer.

Woodgate was born in November 1845 in Belbroughton Worcestershire, the son of Rev Henry Arthur Woodgate, the rector of Belbroughton Holy Trinity Church. He was educated at Radley College and entered the 4th Foot in April 1865. He served in the Abyssinian War, the Ashanti War, and the Anglo-Zulu War.

Woodgate served during the Second Boer War and fought at the Battle of Spion Kop. He commanded a large force sent to capture the strategic hill during a night assault on 23 January. On the following morning he sustained a serious wound that was, in the end, to take his life; a shell splinter struck his head above the right eye. He suffered injury to the brain associated with a shattered orbit. It is documented that while being carried down the hill to hospital on a stretcher, he struggled to rejoin his men and had to be forcibly restrained. As a result of the trauma he lost all recent memory and had no recollection of the war.

Woodgate later fell into a coma and died at Mooi River Natal on 23 March 1900, aged 54. His grave is in the churchyard of St John's Anglican Church just outside Mooi River.

He left a fiancée, Gladys Newbolt.

In addition to a memorial on the Spioenkop battlefield there is also a memorial to him in the Belbroughton Holy Trinity Church yard.

Abyssinian War Medal (1868) Ashanti War Medal (1873-4) and bar and Mentioned in Despatches, Zulu War Campaign Medal (1879)[1] and bar and Mentioned in Despatches, Sierra Leone 1898 and Mentioned in Despatches, Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG). He was created a Companion in the Order of the Bath (CB) in May 1896 and Knight Commander in Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in January 1900.

His will was proved in the Principal Registry of the Probate Division of Her Majesty's High Court of Justice on 30 June 1900, by his two executors, Lieutenant-Colonel Edward De Barry Barnett of 32 Cambridge Square, Hyde Park, London and George Nicholas Hardinge of 17 Lower Berkeley Street, London. His home address was given as United Services Club, Pall Mall, London