I've nothing to add in the way of factual information - just a rather strange reason why I have always known the name of this tragic battle. Whenever the subject of reincarnation or life after death came up, my dad always used to say: "I was killed at Spion Kop, you know." Apparently, when my parents were on their honeymoon in the early 1950s, they noticed two elderly ladies who kept staring at them in the hotel restaurant every day. Eventually, one of them came up and said to my father: "I hope you don't mind my talking to you, but you are the absolute image of my brother who was killed at Spion Kop." It obviously meant a lot to this old lady to be talking to him, and my dad always believed that in some shape, manner or form he must have been connected with that young man who had died some 50 years before.

(My parents spent their honeymoon in Worthing, Sussex - the old lady could perhaps have been from the same family as the builder of your house, Acorn ?)

- jeanie