Colonel John Pennycuick, CSI, ME, RE (1841-1911)
/Colonel John Pennycuick C.S.I., Madras Engineers and Royal Engineers. is commemorated in a memorial in the South Nave Transept.
John Pennycuick was educated at the Military Seminary, Addiscombe
1857-58. He was commissioned into the Madras Engineers and served with them until they were incorporated into the Royal Engineers.
SERVICE RECORD
Lieutenant
2nd. Capt.
Captain
Major
Lt.Col.
10.12.1858
13.10.1870 )
5.7.1872 )
Regimental Rank
8.12.1876 )
4. 3.1886 )
Lt.Col.
Colonel
8.12.83
8.12.87
Army Rank
WAR SERVICE
Lieut.John Pennycuick served in the Abyssinian campaign in 1867/68 as company officer of "H" company.
During the whole campaign he was employed on public works at Zoula.
This consisted of increasing the width of the pier, making embankments along the shore to prevent sea erosion, erecting a hospital and other buildings, and helping with the railroad.
His report said that "Lieut.Pennycuick conducted his duties efficiently".
He returned to India in June 1868, where he spent most of the rest of his service.
He planned and built the Periyar system which supplies water to Madura in the south of India. The scheme involved the diversion across the Indian peninsula into the Bay of Bengal of a river which would naturally flow in the opposite direction into the Arabian Sea. He had to make a reservoir by building a huge dam in a remote gorge situated 3000 feet above the sea in dense malarial jungle, and then conduct the water from this artificial lake through a mountain range by a long tunnel.
In December 1891 he was placed on the Indian Supernumerary List and received a Brigadier General's appointment of Civil Engineer, 1st Class.
He became Chief Engineer and Secretary to the Government Public Works
Department, Madras, until his retirement.
He became a Companion of the Star of India in 1895 and retired on 11.1.'86 when he became President of Cooper's Hill College (The Indian Army Technical College).
In 1897 he was awarded the Telford Gold Medal for his paper, "The Diversion of the Periyar." He was in addition a Fellow of Madras University.
Above: Zula Camp, photographed by 10th Company Royal Engineers. Zula, thirty miles from Massawa, was chosen as base camp because of its sheltered bay and nearness to the mountains, but intense heat and shortage of water nullified some of the advantages. The photograph shows some of the many nationalities (Indians, Persians, Egyptians, Turks, Arabs and Abyssinians) engaged in the construction work. The climate and indiscipline of the workers caused chaos until the arrival of Napier's second in command, Sir Charles Staveley, in December 1867.
The base camp at Zula near Massawa at which Lieutenant
Pennycuick served in the Abyssinian campaign.
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.
