Richard Charles Lowndes
Richard Charles Lowndes | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1888 |
| Died | 1960 (aged 71–72) |
| Allegiance |  United Kingdom |
| Branch | Royal Artillery |
| Rank | Major |
| Conflicts | Siege of Kut |
| Awards | Military Cross |
| Alma mater | Malvern College |
| Relations |
|
Major Richard Charles Lowndes MC (1888 – 1960) was a British Royal Artillery officer and influential British freemason.
Family
Richard Charles Lowndes (1888–1960)[1] was born into an upper middle class family. He was the elder son of The Rev. William Dobson Lowndes, of Christ's College, Cambridge, of Little Comberton Rectory, Pershore, Worcestershire,[2] and Margaret Moody JP (1863–1943),[3] a Pershore District Councillor,[2] who was a daughter of Major-General Richard Clement Moody, who was the founder of British Columbia, and of Mary Susannah Hawks of the Hawks family.[2]
His maternal uncles included Colonel Richard Stanley Hawks Moody CB (b. 1854); Captain Henry de Clervaux Moody (b. 1864); and Major George Robert Boyd Moody (b. 1868). His maternal great-grandparents were Colonel Thomas Moody, CRE WI, ADC, Kt. and Martha Clement (1784 – 1868).
The Rectorship of Little Comberton, Pershore, Worcestershire, had been held by his paternal line continuously for 113 years.[2] His father had been Rector for 43 years,[2] and his paternal grandfather The Rev. Edward Spencer Lowndes also had been Rector.[2] His paternal grandmother was the daughter of The Rev. William Parker, of Trinity College, Oxford, who also had been Rector.[2]
Siblings
Richard Charles Lowndes had one brother who was The Rev. William Parker Lowndes, of St. Pancras Church, Ipswich, also of the Royal Artillery,[2] who died during 1929 after a fall from his horse exacerbated wounds that he had received in World War I.[4] He had two sisters: Mary de Clervaux, who married Alan Edgar Lester, of Birmingham and Harborne, and who drowned in 1950;[5] and Margaret Alice, who was a missionary at Zanzibar with the Universities' Mission to South Africa.[2]
Private life
He was educated at Malvern College,[6] and lived at Boar's Hill, Oxford.[7]
He married Phyllis Daphne Vernon Cooke (1897–1995) in 1920.[8]
Military service
Richard Charles Lowndes served in the Royal Artillery,[9] into which he was commissioned in 1909,[10] including in India,[10] and was captured and imprisoned by the Turkish after the Siege of Kut in World War I.[2]
After he retired from the British Army he worked as a shipping merchant at Killick Nixon, Bombay, India, before he returned to live at Boar's Hill, Oxford.[2]
Freemasonry
He was a Royal Arch freemason of Ubique Chapter No. 1789, of which he served as First Principal, and a founder of Old Malvernian Lodge No. 4363.[10] He was initiated into Mount Everest Lodge No. 2439 in Darjeeling, India, which is now known as Mount Everest Lebong Lodge No. 52.[10] He was also a member of Felix Lodge No. 355 of the Scottish Constitution,[10] and a member of the Correspondence Circle of Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076,[11] and a Celebrant of Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia.[12]
Sources
- ^ The Daily Telegraph, 18 July 1960, 'Deaths'
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k The Worcester News, 21 March 1941, p.5
- ^ Berrow's Worcester Journal, 18 December 1943, p.4
- ^ "St. Pancras Church, Ipswich, Our Parish".
- ^ The Tewkesbury Register and Agricultural Gazette, 16 September 1950, p.3, 'Bathing Tragedy'
- ^ The Malvern Register, 1865 - 1904, Second Edition, by R. T. C. Cookson, Malvern Advertiser, 1905, p.515
- ^ "The British Columbia Historical Quarterly, January - April 1951, Archives of British Columbia, British Columbia Historical Association, p.85" (PDF).
- ^ The Ealing Gazette and West Middlesex Observer, 26 June 1920, p.5
- ^ The London Gazette, 12 July 1938
- ^ a b c d e "Old Malvernian Lodge No. 4363, History, The Founders, Richard Lowndes".
- ^ Ars Quatuor Coronatorum Vol. 49, Volume XLIX Part I, 1939, p.191
- ^ "Masonic Rosicrucian Societies, by Harold V. B. Voorhis, Published by Henry Emmerson, New York, 1958, p.51" (PDF).