Herbert, Viscount Plumer

Field Marshal Herbert Charles Onslow Plumer, 1st Viscount Plumer G.C.B. is buried in the chapel of St George at the west end of the nave of Westminster Abbey. He was a distinguished commander during the 1914-1918 war, Governor of Malta and High Commissioner for Palestine. A son of Hall Plumer and his wife Louise (Hudson) he was born in Kensington in London on 13th March 1857. His great grandfather was Sir Thomas Plumer, Master of the Rolls. Educated at Brighton and Eton college he joined the army and served in India and the Sudan and later South Africa 1896-1902 when Robert Baden Powell was one of the scouts for his regiment. In 1884 he married Annie Goss. Their son Thomas became 2nd Viscount Plumer and their daughters were Sybil, Eleanor and Marjorie. Herbert commanded troops on the Western Front from 1915 and was given the rank of General. In 1917 he took part in the battle of Messines and after a spell at the Italian front returned to Ypres as Lord Haig's subordinate. After the war he was made a Field Marshal and created a peer. He was a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath and in Henry VII's chapel in the Abbey, the chapel of this Order, is his stall plate.

He died on 16th July 1932 and his funeral took place at the Abbey after a procession from the Guards Chapel at Wellington Barracks. Lord Allenby was one of the pallbearers and a few years later he was buried next to Plumer. The stone reads simply:

Plumer Field Marshal 1857-1932

The chapel in which Herbert is buried was re-modelled earlier in 1932 and dedicated to those who had died during the Great War. An inscription on the west wall reads:

This chapel was completed as a memorial to Field Marshal Lord Plumer 1932

The chapel was known as the chapel of the Holy Cross or the Warriors Chapel  until it was dedicated to St George in 1944.

Further Reading

"Plumer of Messines" by General Sir Charles Harington, 1935

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography