Up Spion Kop, Salcombe

The name Spion Kop caught my eye the other day and I resolved to look it up. A post on Facebook mentioned Spion Kop in Salcombe and I thought it sounded distinctly non local for a name around here.

Then serendipity had me watch an episode of "Who do you think you are?", which is a TV programme that researches the family trees of celebrities. Celebrities are people who you have mostly never heard of. Celebrity has become a job description. Children who once would have dreamed of being an astronaut or a nurse now want to be a celebrity.

But I digress. This particular celebrity had an ancestor who was in the British Army and fought in the Boer War in South Africa which is where we get to Spion Kop, literally, because that is where the original Spion Kop is.

These 213 steps in Salcombe, harbour a little piece of Afrikaaner history. Returning travellers and property owners likened the steep, gruelling climb of the long flight of stone steps in Salcombe to scaling that treacherous South African hill.

Spion Kop means "Lookout Hill" in Afrikaans.

On January the 23rd to 24th of 1900 a battle was fought for the capture of Spion Kop. Hills were vital in battle back then in the days before missiles and drones and satellites. To fight a battle you needed to see the battlefield and to see the enemy. You needed to be on any available hilltop.

It was a significant battle in a greater significant war that amongst other things, was about gold. Lots of gold. Everybody who was anybody back then was involved in this bloody event. Even the young Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi were in the thick of it or nearby.

This was actually the second Boer War in what was to eventually become the country of South Africa, but which at the time was made up of assorted British and Boer colonies. The Boer republics settled by people of Dutch ancestry were mainly in the north and east of what is South Africa today. The second Boer War saw them annexed by the British Empire whose main colonies were Natal and Cape Colony.

The Dutch republics declared war on 11th October 1899 after tensions had risen when the British sent garrisons to border areas in Natal. In short the early stages of the war saw the town of Ladysmith in Natal, encircled by the Dutch forces and it was subsequently referred to as the siege of Ladysmith. Ladysmith was cut off for 118 days while various attempts were made by British forces to rescue the town.

The start of the Boer War like all wars was a highly complex series of smaller events that slowly and imperceptibly led to one eventual conclusion, all out war, of which it is always impossible to predict the outcome.

People who find themselves in a place that they are not familiar with and especially when that place has unfamiliar names in an unfamiliar language, have a habit of creating shorthand nicknames that they immediately understand, for ease of use.

So it was that the British troops in a line along the ridge called Platrand, renamed features of it, Waggon Hill and Caesar's Camp. These were well known features back at army camp in Aldershot in England. The Platrand was the high ground to the south east of Ladysmith while Spion Kop was the mountain peak southwest of the town.

So the Battle of Spion Kop was a major event in the attempt to break the siege of Ladysmith. It was vital that the British forces take control of the hill. Spion Kop was 1410 feet high and lay at almost exactly the centre of the Boer lines.

The British climbed up the hill at night and in dense mist. They surprised the small Boer piquet and drove them off the kop at bayonet point. Of the 15 men in the Boer piquet, one was mortally wounded and his grave lies on the hill to this day. Ten British soldiers were wounded in the charge. The surviving Boers retreated down the hill to their camp waking up their fellow Boers by screaming "Die Engelse is op die kop!" (The English are on the hill!).

As dawn broke, the British discovered that they held only the topographical crest of Spion Kop, while the military crest was another 150-200 metres further forward and lower than the British position. The military crest, on the edge of the plateau, effectively created dead ground in which the Boers could freely move without being seen by the British. The Boer positions on Green Hill, Conical Hill, Aloe Knoll and the Twin Peaks were all below the British held crest, but they could all fire upon the British trenches and the British had no heavy weapons on Spion Kop with which to return fire. The British had no direct knowledge of the topography of the summit and the darkness and fog had compounded the problem. Furthermore, the British trenches were inadequate for all defensive purposes. Because the summit of the kop was mostly hard rock, the trenches were at most 40 centimetres (16 in) deep and provided an exceptionally poor defensive position – the British infantry in the trenches could not see over the crest of the plateau and the Boers were able to fire down the length of the crescent-shaped trench from the adjacent peaks.

A bloody battle ensued. By nightfall the British had won control but failed to realise this as an unauthorised withdrawal took place in the chaos. Ammunition and water were running out.

When morning came, the Boer generals were astonished to see two burghers on the top of Spion Kop, waving their slouch-hats in triumph. The only British on the kop were the dead and the dying.

The British suffered 243 fatalities during the battle; many were buried in the trenches where they fell. Approximately 1,250 British were either wounded or captured. Mohandas Gandhi was a stretcher-bearer at the battle, in the Indian Ambulance Corps he had organised, and was decorated. The Boers suffered 335 casualties of which 68 were dead, including Commandant Prinsloo's commando casualties of 55 killed and wounded out of 88 men.

The British retreated back over the Tugela hills, but the Boers were too exhausted to pursue and follow up their success. Once across the river, General Sir Redvers Buller managed to rally his troops. Ladysmith would be relieved by the British four weeks later.

General Sir Redvers Buller led British forces in South Africa during the early months of the Second Boer War. Famous for winning the Victoria Cross in the Zulu War, he successfully relieved the siege of Ladysmith in February 1900. Wikipedia

To read more about General Sir Redvers Buller check out my post on the Treasures of Crediton and the Buller Memorial.

As to how Spion Kop in Salcombe got its name we can only guess, but there are many places featuring tortuous steep hills or vertical steps that were subsequently named Spion Kop by survivors of the Boer War on their return.

Established in 1906, only a few years after the battle, the Kop at Anfield, the home stadium of Premier League club Liverpool F.C., is one of the most famous football stands in the world. The first recorded reference to a sports terrace as "Kop" related to Woolwich Arsenal's Manor Ground in 1904. There are believed to have been more than 20 sports grounds in Britain with stands called a Kop.

Named, just as they gave British names to strange sounding Afrikaans features in Africa when they were there. There is a hilltop feature in South Africa to this day called Caesar's Camp, just as there is a long steep hill of steps in Salcombe in South Devon called Spion Kop.