After the war, as a regular officer, Julius remained in the Army, however he became a farmer. His wife Emilie came from a farming family of many generations. Some of the men from his old Brigade worked on the farm for him.
Penstock Hall
Emilie had two daughters after the war, Rosemary and Elizabeth.
Emilie and her two youngest
They were living at Penstock Hall, Brabourne, near Ashford, at the foot of the North Downs in Kent. Julius was a typical English country squire according to someone who knew him. They kept and rode horses. Julius and sons went fishing and shooting. The eldest son Patrick was a talented artist in watercolours and painted landscapes of the district. The girls liked to go swimming in the local river if they weren't riding their horses. They all helped out with the farm.
Julius
On occasion they would visit and be visited by family such as Julius' elder brothers Alfred, a distinguished QC, future Judge and sometime Conservative MP (Preston 1922), and Rev. Horace who was the Vicar of St Marys Church, Brent Eleigh, Suffolk and their respective wives.
Family Get-together at Uncle Alfred's house
In the early 1930s the Army wanted to send Julius to India. He and Emilie had no desire to return there having been stationed in Karachi in the early 1900s so he resigned from the Regular Army Reserve, his resignation papers dated 14th February 1933. His sons George and John both went to India around this time though, joining the Indian Army mainly it seems because it was cheaper to keep a horse there. George became a military lawyer. John ended up as an officer in the Burma Border Force.
John
The eldest son Patrick became a curate in the Church of England, no doubt influenced by his Uncle Rev. Horace Kennedy. He took up a position in Rotherham, Yorkshire.
Rosemary and Elizabeth
When war broke out again in 1939 Julius was asked by the War Office to organise the early fortifications at Porthcurno in Cornwall around the all-important transatlantic telephone cable. This is not surprising, an artillery officer spent a major portion of his time organising building works for gun platforms and defensive structures of all kinds. After this work was completed he took over as commander of the Brabourne Home Guard unit.
Emilie died sadly at the age of 60 on the 27th June 1942 in a nursing home in Cambridge. She was buried near Sudbury in Suffolk. As a young girl she had lived under siege at Ladysmith during the Boer War, treating injured victims with her mother Frances. She had had to endure the agony of waiting at home for Julius while he was on the Western Front for four years then in 1939-40 face air attacks, the very real and imminent threat to Kent of invasion by the Nazis and the possibility of losing her three sons in another World War. Patrick by now had joined the forces as a chaplain.
Julius took himself to his late wife's homeland, Natal, South Africa with his youngest daughter Elizabeth. They lived at 277 Bulwer Street, Pietermaritzburg. Elizabeth attended agricultural college. In Natal Julius met a distant cousin of both his and his late wife, Dorothy Gertrude nee Anderson, in her early forties. She was the widow of G.C. Van Heerden, a South African MP. They became close and in a short time they were married, on 27th February 1943.
Sadly Julius had medical problems which caught up with him in the form of a heart attack whilst out riding on November 16th 1943 and he died like his late wife aged 60.
He left behind his widow Dorothy, daughters Joan, Rosemary, Elizabeth and sons Patrick, George and John.
Sources : William Kennedy, Elizabeth nee Kennedy, Elizabeth nee Scott and Saxonlodge.net
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