The marriage ceremony was conducted by Rev George Lovely, who had conducted Alfred and Emma's wedding six years earlier. She moved back to England on Walter's death and expected to live in the same style to which she had become accustomed in India. This was employing so many servants, which she could not afford. She lived at Westbourne, Wilton Road until 'Chowringhee' had been completed,and she moved into it with Walter and Maude, until the househad to be sold and they all moved into Salisbury.

“Although no documentary evidence of Isabella’s birth certificate has yet been found, it would appear that she was definitely born in Australia, where her parents were living at the time.

Her father was William Henry WATERS (1810-1861), an Irish labourer who had been baptized on 4 January 1810 at St Iberius (Anglican) church in Wexford. Like so many other Irishmen unable to find local work, William decided to follow in his father’s footsteps, & joined the army. (Joseph had been in the 44th (East Essex) Regiment). In 1831, William had sailed over to Liverpool, and, at just 21, enlisted in the East India Company army as a gunner. On 3 June of that year, he embarked on the Thomas Grenville and arrived at Fort William in Calcutta on 16 October. He was to be attached to No.1 Troop, 3 Brigade of the Bengal Artillery stationed at Dum Dum. By 1839, he was a corporal and in that year married Isabella (the daughter of Thomas & Elizabeth JOHNSON) on 19 February at St Stephens Church in Dum Dum. Although Isabella was just 15 at the time, this was not unusual in India. She was to have six surviving children.

By 1843 William was a sergeant & by 1847, was the Sergeant Overseer of the Government stud, maintaining horses for the Artillery. Before 1846, William & Elizabeth were stationed at the Honourable East India Company (HEIC) horse stud on the Bungarribee estate. The estate itself was situated at Eastern Creek, in the Blacktown district, west of Sydney in NSW Australia. It was there that Isabella Bungarribee was probably born. (The name ‘Bungarribee’ is derived after the burial place of an Aboriginal king – ‘resting place of a king, Bungaroo’). In 1846, Sgt & Mrs. Waters with two children & 8 grooms returned to Calcutta travelling on the Emily Jane which departed Sydney on 11 September & arrived in Calcutta in the November (as reported in the Bengal Directory of 1847). In 1852, William had completed 21 years service and was “pensioned to the General Orders by the Commander-in-Chief” attached to Hauper Stud in Bengal. His only surviving son Joseph Henry (Harry) was born in August 1854 in Calcutta.

In 1856, a new settlement ‘Hopetown’ (now Kurseong, near Darjeeling) was established in Sikkim. Here William became a tea planter, assistant on 1,500 acres on a spur of the Sanchall Range, where his two youngest children were brought up: Alice Mima (1858) who might have been born in Calcutta while Catherine Hope (1861) was baptized at Darjeeling. In 1859 William had written his last will & testament with his wife Isabella as sole executrix & made provision for the children’s education. He was to die on his way from Hope Town to Calcutta in December 1861. The surviving children at home at the time were Isabella (aged 16), Leah (8), Harry (7), Alice (3) & Catherine (6 months). William’s widow Isabella survived him for another 27 years until 1888 when she was buried in the Lower Circular Road Cemetery in Calcutta.

Isabella Bungarribee met her future husband, Walter Marsh Osmond (1840-1894) when he moved to Calcutta from Dacca after the death of his first wife and took up lodgings with Isabella’s mother. Walter had arrived in India in about 1861/2 and became a house builder in the employment of one Khajeh Abdool Gunny of Dacca. Here, he met & married Jane Amelia Galbraith (nee Davidson) the only daughter of James George Davidson of Calcutta, a writer (clerk) with the Military Department. Jane had been born in Dacca on 25 August, 1839. She had married her first husband, Robert Sharpe Galbraith, a coachbuilder on 4 April 1859 at the Scotch Free Church in Calcutta and was a widow by the time she married Walter four years later on 19 October 1863. Jane’s marriage to Walter was performed by Rev. Robert Robinson who was to perform her burial service four months later in Dacca when she died from acute peritonitis on 20 February 1864.

It was sometime after Jane’s death that Walter moved to Calcutta where he joined Mackintosh, Burn & Co., described as ‘contractors, surveyors, architects & builders’ as an assistant & where his elder brother Alfred Thomas Osmond (1829-1901) was already working. Walter & Isabella married at the Old Church, Calcutta on 1 May 1866 and we find his business address was 5 Kyd Street. Fours years later in 1870, his address was 17 Chowringhee Road & nine years after that, we learn that Walter is an ‘Architect & Builder’ & his address: 8 Esplanade Row E, Calcutta. In 1892, Walter became a partner in the firm, in which his elder son Walter William & his nephew Harold William Browne from Wanganui, New Zealand were both assistants. Walter eventually became a senior partner prior to his unexpected death two years later.

Walter & Isabella (know within the family as ‘Issie’) had four children, all born in Calcutta:
Walter William (known as ‘Wattie’), born 10 November 1868,
Lucy Isabella 26 June 1870,
Percy Herbert 22 July 1872 &
Gertrude Mary Hope 16 June 1879. (The name ‘Hope’ probably chosen in memory of Issie’s youngest sister or was it a Waters’ family name?)

Shortly before Gertrude’s birth in 1879, when Issie must have been heavily pregnant, she was in England visiting the King Edward VI’s Grammar (boarding) School, Berkhamstead, Herts to officially register her elder son Wattie on 26 April. Both her sons were to be educated at Berkhamstead and lived with their uncle & aunt (Arthur & Matilda Osmond) during the holidays. The family returned to Salisbury in England on leave at regular intervals over the years and lived at 4 Westbourne,Wilton Road in Salisbury, (the city where Walter’s family lived), to be close to relatives including Issie’s sister Alice when she visited London.

Walter’s youngest surviving sister, Ellen, who had travelled out to New Zealand in 1866, married Alfred Augustus Browne (a purser of P&O line) on 14 May 1867 at St Paul’s Cathedral, Wellington. (It was her only son Harold who had joined the Osmond’s in Calcutta as an assistant with Mackintosh, Burn & Co.) We learn from the diary kept by Ellen’s youngest daughter Evelyn, that in 1892, Ellen & her two younger daughters made an extended visit to England from the May, (about a month after Walter & Issie themselves & their two daughters had returned on leave), basing themselves at Salisbury while they were over here. In the June, however, Walter was ordered to India & Issie & the two girls remained in England. In the autumn, Issie returned to India, accompanied this time by her future daughter-in-law Maude Bartrum Osmond who was to marry her first cousin Wattie on 21 November in St Paul’s Cathedral,Calcutta.

The Browne’s visit, however, had to be further extended because Ellen herself suffered a bad accident which left her incapacitated well into 1894. During 1894, Evelyn tells us that while Walter stayed in India, Issie, had left Calcutta on 7 March on board the SS Bengal. She was met by her younger son Percy at Marseilles & they journeyed back to Westbourne where they arrived on 5 April. It was intended that she & the two girls would return to India in the autumn.

Unfortunately, for Issie & the family, their situation that summer dramatically changed within a period of ten weeks. Issie’s elder daughter Lucy suffered from poor health & Evelyn mentions in her diary periods of time when Lucy was confined to bed, both in 1892 & 1894. It is believed that at such times, Issie’s loyalty used to be torn between her children when ill in England & her husband when he was out in India. In the June, Lucy was found to have a tumour on the brain which needed operating immediately. This was performed at Westbourne on the day after Lucy’s 24th birthday (27 June). Although Lucy recovered from this operation, she died at Salisbury on 28 November. Meanwhile Issie had received a telegram from Wattie in Calcutta in early August, telling her that Walter, who had fallen ill & his condition had worsened. She promptly left for India on 17 August catching the mail boat, while workmen came to pack everything for the family’s planned return to India. By the 4 September, Issie reported that she had arrived safely & that Walter was still very ill & telling the family to remain at Westbourne.

By this time, however, the packing had virtually been completed & Lucy felt obliged to telegraph India stating that “Everything packed & gone.” On the 10 September, Westbourne received two telegrams within an hour of each other.
First read: “Obey orders. Recall baggage. Father seriously ill. Worst feared. Cancelling passage.” The second: “Father died peacefully this morning.” Walter had died of ‘chronic diarrhoea’ at the family home ‘Ye Palmerie’, No 23 Ballygunge Circular Road, Calcutta a month short of his 54th birthday. After her husband’s death, Issie & the family in India returned to England.

After her husband’s death, Issie & the family in India returned to England. In his latter years, Walter had drawn up grandiose plans for his retirement home at Alderbury near Salisbury on the Southampton road. The house was called ‘Chowringee’, named after the district in Calcutta where his firm had their offices. The work on the house was started while Walter & the family still lived in Calcutta, the plans for it being sent home to the builders in England, showing a turreted wall around the 6-acre estate. Many unforeseen problems arose in its construction. Faulty foundations & Walter’s erroneous impression that building a house in England would be as cheap as one built in India, contributed greatly, together with that fact that the building firm went bankrupt. The house consequently was still incomplete at the time of Walter’s death & when the family returned to England, Wattie & Maude went to live at Broadstairs with her parents (Arthur & Matilda Osmond) while Issie lived for a time in Bournemouth. It is thought that Issie had no understanding of financial matters; having about six servants whilst in India, she expected the same style of living on her return to England. It is believed that the family solicitor visited Wattie & warned him: “You will have to do something about your mother because she is spending all her money.”

Now that she lived back in England, Issie became known as ‘Long Granny’ within the family to differentiate her from Maude’s mother Matilda, who was known as ‘Broad Granny’. When ‘Chowringee’ was finally completed in 1899, Issie went to live there with Wattie & Maude and their six children. They were to live there until 1923, when the family had to sell up and move into Salisbury where they firstly lived at ‘Wellington House’, 4 Bourne Avenue & then secondly at 29 Bourne Avenue where many of her great grandchildren visited her & considered her a ‘holy terror’, although she could be extremely kind. She died on 5 June 1935 and was buried three days later in her daughter Gertrude’s grave in Bemerton, a suburb of Salisbury. “ S.E.Osmond 12 December 2011541

Walter attended the Cathedral school as a pupil and chorister.

The burial registration for his first wife, Jane has his profession down as a house builder in the employment of Khajeh Abdool Gunny of Dacca. By 1868 he had joined Alfred's firm, Mackintosh, Burn and Co, as an assistant. By 1892 the firm, Mackintosh, Burn and Co was referred to in the Indian directoryas 'Contractors, surveyors, architects and builders' and showed Walter to be a partner.

William followed in his elder brother's footsteps, Alfred and moved to India some time in 1863.
Walter visited England occassionaly, otherwise he was in Calcutta, but he had plans for a retirement home at Alderbury near Salisbury. He drew the plans up and had the work started while still in India by a local builder. The land acquired was six acres and was surrounded by a turreted wall. Difficulties were encountered with the foundations and the building firm fell bankrupt.

This is 'Chowringhee'!

1868. Foundation of the Osmond Memorial Church, formerly Wesleyan Methodist Church, 56, S N Banerjee Road, Kol.-14, Calcutta, India. It is assumed that Walter had some direct connection with the foundation of this church.

10 September 1894. Burial record, O’smond, Walter Marsh, India.

1894 gravestone, ‘In memory of Walter Marsh Osmond born 15 October 1840 died 10 September 1894 ???’

The memorial inside Sudder Street Wesleyan Chapel reads as follows: ‘In affectionate remembrance of Walter M Osmond, of the firm of Mackintosh, Burn & Co., Calcutta who died 10th September 1894, aged 53 years. He was for many yeaars the generous and devoted friend of every good cause in this City, and especially of the work in connection with this Church. This tablet is erected, together with three Memorial Windows, by friends who hold his memory in loving regard. Peace, perfecr peace.’ See picture.