Finding a local (Waterloo) hero
History homework? Love it, hate it…feed it to the dog.
When the charity Waterloo 200 set schools a project to mark the battle’s bicentenary it reminded me of my own unfinished work, locked for some years on an old computer.
Two hundred schools across Britain and continental Europe were asked to research a Waterloo soldier connected to their local areas and upload their work to an e-book.
The children did a fantastic job and showed how international events can reach into the smallest communities.
My own history project was not set by a teacher but sprang from the 19th century grave of a businessman at my local church, St Martin of Tours in Epsom, Surrey.
The story that emerged from this somewhat forgotten memorial told of the family loss of perhaps England’s finest landscape painter, John Constable.
The grave carries the inscription: “Beneath this Stone are deposited the mortal remains of James Gubbins Esq. of Epsom who departed this life on 7th day of June 1814 Aged 69. Also to the memory of his son Captn. James Gubbins of the 13th Dragoons who was killed on the 18th of June 1815 in the battle of Waterloo in Flanders.”
Who was Captain Gubbins? How did he die and if he wasn’t buried here, where was his final resting place?
Research revealed that Gubbins was one of two of Constable’s cousins to fight at Waterloo. The other, Lt Thomas Allen, the subject of one of the school projects, survived the battle but Gubbins was said to have been killed leading his troop in a charge.
The captain was the son of Mary Watts, a younger sister of Constable’s mother. Mary had married the successful London surveyor and builder James Gubbins Snr in about 1770, and had settled at Epsom. In 1806, he had been consulted about building alterations to St Martin’s church.
Constable frequently visited their grand family home, The Hylands, sketching the nearby common in August of that year. He also captured in oils a shallow valley and it was Epsom, according to the author Anthony Bailey, that he “found his own way as a landscape painter”.
For Constable, Captain Gubbins was “one of the most interesting men he had known” and had acted as his adviser on the latest fashion.
The artist was devastated by his loss at Waterloo. It was widely reported that the dashing officer, aged 35, had been hit by a cannon ball.
Bailey states in his work John Constable: A Kingdom of His Own that “later, it was announced that his frightened horse had carried him into the enemy lines where, although he surrendered, a French officer killed him”.
Gubbins had started his military career as an ensign in the fashionable 60th Regiment in 1804, becoming a lieutenant by purchase in 1805. He transferred to the 3rd Regiment of Dragoons later that year and bought the captaincy of a troop in 1809. Early in 1811, he switched to 13th Light Dragoons and joined his new regiment in Spain.
He kept a journal during his time fighting for Wellington in the Peninsula that included an account of the charging of the French guns at Arroyo Molinos.
Gubbins was reported to have been killed early in the battle at Waterloo as his regiment came under heavy artillery fire. The Battle of Waterloo: Also of Ligny and Quatre Bras, printed for John Booth (1817) states of Gubbins: “This gallant officer was conspicuous for his intelligence and bravery in the field”.
His body was not found after the battle. “It had been assumed that the interment of this officer would have been with others, in the field of battle,” writes Brian Bouchard, a historian of Leatherhead and District, near Epsom, but “reportedly 4,000 corpses were reduced to ash on the battlefield on funeral pyres of resinous wood”. It appears that the Epsom monument to the captain is the only one.
As for Lt Thomas Allen of the 1st Line Battalion, King’s German Legion, he died peacefully at the age of 46 on the 12th November 1833 and is buried at All Saints Churchyard in Chelmsford. It is speculated that he fought bravely in the fierce defence of La Haye Sainte farm compound at Waterloo.
