Category: HD Village Trust and Archives

Brigadier-General Edmund William Costello, CMG, CVO, DSO was born on 7th. August 1873 in Sheikhbudin, near Dera Ghazi Khan, Punjab on the North-West Frontier of India and was a British Indian Army officer and a recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.  The son of a colonel in the Indian Medical Service. He was educated in England at Beaumont College, Stonyhurst College and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. In 1892 he was commissioned intothe West Yorkshire Regiment but transferred to the Indian Army in 1894 and was posted to the 22nd Punjab Infantry.
He was 23 years old and attached to Punjab Infantry during the Malakand Frontier War, when the following deed took place for which he was awarded the VC.
Costello’s connections to Hadlow Down are by his marriage to Elsie Maud L Huggins the daughter of Charles Lang Huggins, of Hadlow Grange, at St Peter and St Edward′s church, Pimlico, on 16 October 1902 Continue reading “Costello, Brigadier-General Edmund William CMG, CVO, DSO (7 August 1873 – 7 June 1949)”

Diana Hope Rowden served in the Womens Auxiliary Air Force and was an agent for the United Kingdom‘s clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II. Rowden was a member of SOE’s Acrobat circuit in occupied France where she operated as a courier until arrested by the Gestapo. She was subsequently executed at the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp. Continue reading “Rowden, Diana (31 January 1915 – 6 July 1944)”