Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen
| Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen | |
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Godwin-Austen in an image published in 1890
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| Born |
6 July 1834 Devon, England |
| Died | 2 December 1923 (aged 89) |
| Citizenship | British |
| Fields | Topography, geology, surveying, natural history, malacology |
| Institutions | Trigonometrical Survey of India |
| Alma mater | Royal Military College, Sandhurst |
| Author abbrev. (zoology) | Godwin-Austen |
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Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen FRS FZS FRGS MBOU (6 July 1834 – 2 December 1923), known until 1854 as Henry Haversham Austen, was an English topographer, geologist, naturalist and surveyor.
He explored the mountains in the Himalayas and surveyed the glaciers at the base of K2, also known as Mount Godwin-Austen, and the geographer Kenneth Mason called Godwin-Austen "probably the greatest mountaineer of his day".
Family tradition holds that Haversham Godwin-Austen was a convert to the Buddhist faith (post a self-attested period as an at least nominal Muslim in the middle to late 1850s), and as such he may be the first known British adherent to Buddhism. His small, Burmese style, Buddhist shrine at Nore, Hascombe, Surrey, is likely to have been erected there around 1901 (although a later date of c. 1920 is possible), perhaps after being situated at each of Godwin-Austen’s successive main residences from 1877 onwards, post his return to England after 25 years in Asia. Accordingly, the shrine probably constitutes the first ever ‘custom built’ physical structure raised for Buddhist devotional purposes in Britain. It was forgotten and lost to view under brambles after Godwin-Austen’s time, prior to rediscovery in 1962 by a new owner of Nore, actor Dirk Bogarde.
Godwin-Austen’s conversion – and possibly his shrine – therefore predates the earliest formal Buddhist missions to Britain: namely those of the Japanese-sponsored ‘Buddhist Propagation Society’, led by Irish born Captain Charles J. W. Pfoundes in 1889, and that of English convert Charles Henry Alan Bennett a.k.a. ‘Ananda Metteyya’ in 1908. ‘The Buddhist Society of Great Britain & Ireland’ was formed in 1907.
The eldest son of the geologist Robert Austen, who in 1884 added Godwin to his surname by royal licence, Henry Haversham Austen was probably born at Ogwell House, near Newton Abbot, Devon, where his father had recently taken up residence. His father's family, landowners in Cheshire and Surrey since the 12th century, was a family of merchant venturers, soldiers, scholars, and collectors. His grandfather, Sir Henry Edmund Austen (1785–1871), was a High Sheriff and Deputy Lieutenant for Surrey and a gentleman of the Privy Chamber to King William IV. His great-grandfather, Robert Austen (died 1797), married Lady Frances Annesley, a descendant of Arthur Annesley, 1st Earl of Anglesey.
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