Lieutenant Robert Ashton Theodore Dury (1863-1885)
/Lieutenant Robert Ashton Theodore Dury is commemorated by a memorial in the North Nave Aisle.
Plaque reads:
Sacred to the Memory of
Lieut. Robert Ashton Theodore Dury 2nd Bttn
South Wales Borderers and attached to XI Regiment
Bengal Infantry, Son of Theodore Henry Dury of Bonsall Leys,
Derbyshire, Born 7th.July 1863, Killed in action at the head of
his men during the Assault of Minhla, Burmah, on 17th Nov. 1885.
Erected in token of their esteem by his brother officers.
Lieutenant Dury was commissioned into the South Wales Borderers in 1883 and went to the Indian Staff Corps two years later. He was killed in action in Burma in November 1885.
The Burma War of 1885
For some years after his accession in 1878 King Thebaw of Burma showed considerable anti-British feeling which culminated in his interference with the Bombay and Burma Trading Company's timber trade. The British government presented an ultimatum to the king which was rejected. War was declared and on 10th November 1885 General Prendergast left Rangoon with a force of 12,000 men to invade Burma. The only way to advance on Mandalay, the capital, was by river and so the troops were taken up-stream by the Royal Navy and landed to attack river-forts. The climate and disease proved greater enemies than the Burmese and the troops suffered badly. At the village of Minhla the Burmese offered stubborn resistance, and it was here that Lieut. Dury fell, the only officer to be killed in the campaign. The British force entered Mandalay on 28th.November, and King Thebaw surrendered to General Prendergast.
Burmese bronze gun from King Thelaw’s Palace in Mandalay, 1885. The carriage was made in the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich in 1858. Liet. Dury of the South Wales Borderers and Indian Staff Corps was killed during the campaign in Burma.
Burma proved to be a difficult country to subdue and it was another six years before the bands of dacoits were hunted down and the area pacified.
From the notebooks ‘The Naval and Military Memorials of Rochester Cathedral’ (1979)
by Roy Trett, OBE, TD,
Rochester Cathedral Chapter Library
The medieval tombs of the Presbytery and Quire Transept have had a tortured history which many effigies apparently moved and several defaced along with the medieval memorials and brasses over the Early Modern period.
Rochester Cathedral features an exceptionally large collection of Colonial-era military memorials and artefacts. This series has begun to highlight the stories behind these collections and their place in our global heritage.
