TOPIC:

Picture of a window in St Andrew's church, Weston-under-Lizard, Staffordshire dedicated to the two sons of the 4th Earl of Bradford who returned safely from the war, one a Lieutenant in the Navy and the other an officer in 3rd Bn Royal Scots. The latter was the heir to the title and appears in medal rolls for the ABW as Capt Viscount O(rlando) Newport, earning QSA plus Cape Colony, Orange Free State and the two date clasps. By the time of WW1, he was Earl of Bradford earning a pair and MID as Lieut Colonel. There is a very impressive scroll to mark his safe return in a corridor generally not open to the public at Weston Park, the family's ancestral home and now run by a charitable foundation.

I have not been able to trace his Naval brother in the ABW medal rolls, whose name was the Hon Richard Orlando Beaconsfield Bridgeman, but he seems to have earned one clasp and to be sporting the QSA in the two photos I spotted in one of the bedrooms. We can date these to pre-1911 and his elder brother is presumably the other officer. Richard went on to earn the Delhi Durbar 1911, NGS clasp Persian Gulf 1909-1914, 1914-15 Star trio and seems to have been mentioned in dispatches on at least a couple of occasions (one for the hunt for the Konigsberg) and earned a DSO before sadly succumbing to disease in January 1917. He rests in Dar-es-Salaam.

I hope these are of interest: the window and scroll are naturally unique.

Ian

Exyeoman
Sub.Lt. Hon. R.O.B.Bridgeman earned the clasp Rhodesia on his QSA medal. He served on HMS Partridge. Peter Singlehurst's book "Afloat and Ashore" might give you some idea of the scope of the ship's activities.
Regards
IL.

Thanks for that info. A v scarce clasp to the Navy and Royal Marines: only 8 issued (the joint lowest with Wittebergen). I suspected his group might be rare/unusual with the Delihi Durbar. The Rhodesia clasp almost certainly makes it unique.
I don't know where the medals are, sad to say!
Ian