Captain Charles Freville Surtees

Charles Freville Surtees was born in 1823 at Heighington, Durham, the son of Robert Surtees of Redwood Hall. He was educated at Harrow and entered the Army in 1842, reaching the rank of Captain in the 10th Hussars in 1847. In 1855 he married Bertha, daughter of Nathaniel Snell Chaunc[e]y, Esq. of Green End, Harts. From 1865 to 1868 he was the Member of Parliament for South Durham, and in 1873 he was High Sheriff of County Durham. From 1873 he was Colonel of the 3rd Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry. Who Was Who (1897) gives his recreation as ‘travelling’ and his clubs as the Army and Navy, the Carlton, the United Services Club, the Cavalry and the Ranelagh.

He appears on the 1861 census, age 37, living at Chobham House, Chobham [Surrey], at which time he gave his profession as 'Army Captain, Retired'. Twenty years later, on the 1881 census, he described himself as a 'Colonel in Militia' and had moved to Little Ditton in Surrey, where he would have been a neighbour of his old friends, the Veyseys.

Charles Freville Surtees died on 22 December 1906. A short obituary appeared in The Times on 24 December 1906: 'The death is announced of Colonel Charles Freville Surtees at the Charing-cross Hotel on Saturday. Born in 1823, he was the youngest son of the late Mr R. Surtees, of Redworth-hall, county Durham. He was hon. colonel of the 3rd Battalion Durham Light Infantry, and was formerly captain in the 10th Royal Hussars. Colonel Surtees sat in the House of Commons from 1865 to 1868 as the Conservative member for South Durham. He was lord of the manor of Mansford, county Durham, and deputy-lieutenant and justice of the peace for county Durham, and he served as Sheriff in 1873. Colonel Surtees, who was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, married, in 1855, Bertha, daughter of Mr N.S. Chauncy, late of Green Ends, Herts.'

Photographed by Camille Silvy of London on 10 October 1862.

From an album compiled by Gertrude Frances Vesey of Long Ditton [Surrey].