The son of the surgeon Christopher Hewetson Barnes, he was born at Marylebone in February 1833. A career soldier, he was an officer in the Royal Artillery and served in British India with the Bengal Artillery. Barnes was seriously wounded by a bullet to his right breast on 10 November 1857, during the rebel siege of Neemuch Fort in Rajputana, which was a part of the Indian Mutiny. He recovered from his wounds and returned to England, where he played first-class cricket for the Marylebone Cricket Club on four occasions in 1860, against Oxford University and Cambridge University, in addition to county opponents in the form of Kent and Sussex. He had little success in these four matches, scoring just 17 runs.