Queen’s South Africa Medal with ‘Laing’s Nek’ bar – Private JAMES HOLLAND – Royal Lancashire Regiment

Reference: MM-MED-0012

You are looking at a Queen’s South Africa Medal inscribed ‘736 Pte J.HOLLAND. R: Lanc: Regt’, with single bar ‘Laing’s Nek’.

According to the available service records, JAMES HOLLAND, a butcher by profession, first enlisted into the 3^rd (Militia) Battalion of the Royal Lancaster Regiment in March 1884, with his address at the time recorded as 8 Fletcher Street (off Marple Street) in Hulme.

On the 29^th of July 1884, so less than five months after joining the Militia, he then enlisted into the Royal Lancaster Regiment as a regular soldier, and over the coming years, he was promoted, and was a corporal by September 1888, however, he was convicted of an act to the prejudice of good order and was reduced to the ranks.

JAMES was transferred to the ‘Reserve’ in December 1889, and he was discharged from the army on the 27^th of July of 1896, however, the next entry in his statement of service shows him having attested again, on the 31^st of July 1896, four days after his discharge.

He served with the 2^nd Battalion of the Regiment in South Africa during the Boer War, from the 24^th of February to the 12^th of August 1900, and he was present at ‘Laing’s Nek’, a series of battles fought against Boer forces from the 2^nd to the 10^th of June 1900, and it is assumed JAMES sustained injury at Laing’s Nek or suffered illness shortly afterwards, making him unfit for further service, because, according to the ‘Roll of Individuals Entitled to the South Africa Medal & Clasps’, he was ‘invalided’ on the 6^th of July 1900.

JAMES HOLLAND (believed to be JAMES HENRY HOLLAND), the son of CHARLES and SARAH HOLLAND, was born c1867 and baptised in the Parish of the Holy Trinity in Hulme near Manchester on the 6^th of October that year.

He married JANETTE GEMMELL in 1898.

Having returned from South Africa, JAMES was back in England and appearing in the 1901 Census taken on the 31^st of March that year, and he was now employed as a railway porter.  

JAMES appears to have survived his wife, who is likely to be the JANET HOLLAND whose death was registered at Nantwich in the December quarter of 1936, and JAMES himself died on the 26^th of May 1939. He was 71 years old (born c1867/68) according to the record, and he died at the Nantwich Poor Law Institution, 200 the Barony in Nantwich, Cheshire.

SELLER NOTE = Supporting documentation obtained and / or created during my research into this medal will be provided.

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