Geologist and Palaeontologist. (1839-1909) [PLOT 37] Harry Govier Seeley was born on 18th February 1839 in London. At the age of two, Seeley was sent to live with pianoforte makers after his father and was declared bankrupt. In 1855 his uncle John Seeley paid to have...

Founder of Ockenden Venture for refugee children. The Ockenden Venture was founded in 1951 by three local schoolteachers and took its name from founder Joyce Pearce’s family home ‘Ockenden’ in White Rose Lane, Woking. The Ockenden Venture became a registered charity...

Railway Engineer. Dugald Drummond born 1st January 1840 was a Scottish steam locomotive engineer. He had a career with the North British Railway, LB&SCR, Caledonian Railway and London and South Western Railway. He was the older brother of the engineer Peter...

Writer. Major General John Hay Beith, CBE born 17th April 1876 was a British schoolmaster and soldier, but he is best remembered as a novelist, playwright, essayist, and historian who wrote under the pen name Ian Hay. After reading Classics at Cambridge University,...

Physician and Public Health Officer. Edward Ballard was a 19th-century English physician, best known for his reports on the unsanitary conditions in which most of Victorian England lived. Ballard was born in Islington, Middlesex, the son Edward George Ballard, the...

English antiquarian and archaeologist specialising in prehistoric and ancient monuments of Dorset. Born in Dorset, with the poet William Barnes he was involved in protecting the Maumbury Rings which resulted in their statutory protection from the route of the...

Sir William Robert Robertson, 1st Baronet, GCB, GCMG, GCVO, DSO. Born 29th January 1860  was a British Army officer who served as Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) – the professional head of the British Army – from 1916 to 1918 during the First World War. As...

Naval Officer. Sir Arthur Cumming KCB born 6th May 1817 was an officer of the Royal Navy. He was born in Nancy, France to Sir Henry John Cumming, a general in the British Army and received naval education at the Royal Naval College in Portsmouth. Cumming served as...

Originator of military precision dancing and the ‘Tiller Girls’. John Tiller always had a keen interest in music. He was always a perfectionist to the point where very few people could live up to his standards. At ten years old he became a choirboy, and with his...