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Battle of Spion Kop, 1900: the acre of massacre above the Tugela

Second Boer War · 23 to 24 January 1900 · British Empire vs Boer republics · ~6 min read · Updated October 2026

Next anniversary: 23 January 2027, the 127th anniversary 23 January in history ›

By Echoes of Battle

Pencil sketch of a long flat topped hill above rolling ground, with handwritten notes marking the positions taken and held during the battle.

“The Battle of Spion Kop”, annotated sketch of the hill, from Archibald Forbes and others, Battles of the Nineteenth Century (Cassell, 1901), via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

At a glance

British EmpireGen. Sir Redvers Buller; Lt. Gen. Sir Charles Warren; Maj. Gen. Edward Woodgate; Lt. Col. Alexander Thorneycroft
vs
Transvaal and Orange Free StateGen. Louis Botha; Schalk Burger
Date
Night of 23 to 24 January 1900; the British left the hill that night
Location
Spion Kop (Spioenkop), above the Tugela River, about 20 miles west of Ladysmith, Natal, South Africa
War
Second Boer War, the second attempt to relieve Ladysmith
Assault force
About 1,700 men under Woodgate and Thorneycroft, later reinforced; Warren had some 13,000 men across the river
Losses
British: about 1,500 casualties, 243 dead on the summit (britishbattles.com) or 322 killed, 563 wounded and 300 captured (Historic UK); Boers: 335 (britishbattles.com) or 95 killed and 140 wounded (Historic UK)
Outcome
Boer victory; the British withdrew across the Tugela
Quick answer

What happened at the Battle of Spion Kop?

On the night of 23 January 1900 British troops climbed Spion Kop, a hill above the Tugela River, to open the road to besieged Ladysmith. In the mist they entrenched on the wrong part of the summit, and on 24 January Boer riflemen and guns shot into their shallow trench from three sides all day. That night the British commander on the hill, Colonel Alexander Thorneycroft, withdrew, not knowing the Boers had also given up. At dawn the Boers took the hill back.1

Few defeats shocked Victorian Britain like Spion Kop. Thousands of British soldiers ended up crowded onto a strip of hilltop the size of a city square, while thousands more below did almost nothing, and at the end of the day both sides believed they had lost.2

The road to Ladysmith

In the first weeks of the war the Boers invaded Natal and besieged a British army of about 10,000 men in Ladysmith. General Sir Redvers Buller's first attempt to break through, straight up the railway at Colenso on 15 December 1899, was a severe reverse. With reinforcements from Britain, he tried again further west, to outflank the Boer trenches along the Tugela.3

Lieutenant General Sir Charles Warren, with some 13,000 men and 36 guns, crossed the river at Trikhardt's Drift from 17 January while Major General Neville Lyttelton's brigade crossed at Potgieter's Drift to the east. Warren moved slowly, and General Louis Botha used the time to bring commandos and guns into the hills facing him. On 23 January Buller rode over and ordered Warren to attack. Warren chose Spion Kop, which he believed was the key to the Boer position.4

A climb in the dark

The column, about 1,700 men of Thorneycroft's Mounted Infantry and the Lancashire battalions of Major General Edward Woodgate's brigade, with Royal Engineers to dig trenches, climbed in darkness and drizzle. Near the top a Boer picket challenged them and fired, then fled from a bayonet charge. In the mist the British could not signal with lamps, so they gave three cheers, which were heard below at about 4 a.m. on 24 January.5

The sappers tried to entrench, but the ground was rock and the trenches were shallow; britishbattles.com says the whole entrenched area covered about an acre. When the mist lifted at about 8 a.m. the British saw that they held only the near edge of the plateau. The trench should have been some 400 yards further forward, and they were overlooked by Boer positions on Aloe Knoll, Conical Hill, Green Hill and the Twin Peaks.6

Under fire from three sides

Botha's answer, as Historic UK quotes it, was simple: "Well, we must take it back." His guns, Krupps, Creusots and Maxim pom-poms, opened on the hilltop while Boer volunteers climbed back up and fired from behind the rocks. Woodgate was mortally wounded early, and so were other senior officers. A signal reached headquarters: "Reinforce at once or all is lost. General dead."7

Buller had Warren put Thorneycroft in command of the summit. In the early afternoon some exhausted Lancashire Fusiliers raised a white flag; Thorneycroft ran forward and told the Boer officer that he allowed no surrender, though about 150 men were still taken. Reinforcements under General Talbot Coke reached the plateau, and in the afternoon Lyttelton's 60th Rifles stormed the Twin Peaks to the east, which panicked their Boer defenders.8

The fighting was just as desperate for the Boers. Only volunteers would climb the hill, and the slopes were littered with their dead.9

The retreat that lost the battle

Warren sent Thorneycroft no orders during the day beyond his appointment, and no word that more troops were coming. At nightfall, without water, his officers dead or wounded and his men spent, Thorneycroft decided to take them down. Winston Churchill, then a war correspondent, was sent up after dark by Warren to learn Thorneycroft's views and to tell him that guns and working parties with sandbags were on the way, but by Churchill's own account the decision to retire had already been taken.10

By then the Boers too had left the summit. At dawn on 25 January two Boer scouts were seen on the empty hilltop waving their hats, and the battle was theirs. Warren's force crossed back over the Tugela. Botha then offered a truce so that both sides could collect their dead and wounded; among the Indian stretcher bearers was a young lawyer, Mohandas Gandhi.11

Counting the cost

The figures differ. britishbattles.com gives about 1,500 British casualties, 243 of them dead in the trench on the summit, and 335 Boer casualties. Richard Rhys Jones, writing for Historic UK, gives 322 British killed or died of wounds, 563 wounded and 300 taken prisoner, against 95 Boers killed and 140 wounded.12

The news nearly brought down the government in London, and Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener were sent out to take over. Spion Kop also misled the Boers: many, including Botha, thought the war as good as won and went home, leaving too few men to stop Buller's next attacks at Vaal Krantz and Pieters Hill, which finally opened the way to Ladysmith.13

The hill is remembered far from Natal. A new terrace built at Anfield, the Liverpool football ground, in 1906 soon became known as the Spion Kop, after the battle in which so many Lancashire men died.14

Notes

A number in the text points to a note; each note names the works that paragraph draws on, listed in full under Sources.

  1. John Mackenzie, “Battle of Spion Kop”; Richard Rhys Jones, “Battle of Spion Kop”. ↩
  2. John Mackenzie, “Battle of Spion Kop”; Richard Rhys Jones, “Battle of Spion Kop”; Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Great Boer War”. ↩
  3. John Mackenzie, “Battle of Spion Kop”; Richard Rhys Jones, “Battle of Spion Kop”. ↩
  4. John Mackenzie, “Battle of Spion Kop”; Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Great Boer War”. ↩
  5. Richard Rhys Jones, “Battle of Spion Kop”. ↩
  6. John Mackenzie, “Battle of Spion Kop”; Richard Rhys Jones, “Battle of Spion Kop”. ↩
  7. Richard Rhys Jones, “Battle of Spion Kop”; John Mackenzie, “Battle of Spion Kop”. ↩
  8. John Mackenzie, “Battle of Spion Kop”; Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Great Boer War”; Richard Rhys Jones, “Battle of Spion Kop”. ↩
  9. John Mackenzie, “Battle of Spion Kop”. ↩
  10. John Mackenzie, “Battle of Spion Kop”; Winston S. Churchill, “London to Ladysmith via Pretoria”; Richard Rhys Jones, “Battle of Spion Kop”. ↩
  11. Richard Rhys Jones, “Battle of Spion Kop”; Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Great Boer War”; John Mackenzie, “Battle of Spion Kop”; E. S. Reddy, “India and the Anglo-Boer War”. ↩
  12. John Mackenzie, “Battle of Spion Kop”; Richard Rhys Jones, “Battle of Spion Kop”. ↩
  13. John Mackenzie, “Battle of Spion Kop”. ↩
  14. Richard Rhys Jones, “Battle of Spion Kop”; Will Hughes, “120 years ago today”. ↩

Sources

Frequently asked questions

When was the Battle of Spion Kop?

The British climbed the hill on the night of 23 January 1900 and fought on the summit all day on 24 January. They withdrew that night, and the Boers reoccupied the hill on the morning of 25 January.

Where is Spion Kop?

In KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, on the north side of the Tugela River, about 20 miles west of Ladysmith. The name is Afrikaans, Spioenkop, meaning spy hill.

Who won the Battle of Spion Kop?

The Boers under Louis Botha. Both sides had left the summit by the night of 24 January, but the Boers returned first, and the British retreated across the Tugela.

Why did the British lose at Spion Kop?

They entrenched in the mist on the wrong part of the hill, overlooked by Boer positions on three sides, their senior officers fell early, and Warren sent the men on the summit no orders or news of reinforcements.

Were Churchill and Gandhi at Spion Kop?

Winston Churchill was there as a war correspondent and climbed the hill after dark. Mohandas Gandhi served with the Indian stretcher bearers who carried off the wounded after the battle.

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