Darlington's Russian cannon in South Park was from the Crimean War

TODAY’S object is a Crimean cannon captured in the heat of bloody battle and transported home in triumph, and which today stands in Darlington’s South Park.

But the cannon’s arrival in Darlington fired the first shot in a bitter political battle.

War clouds began to gather over Europe in 1853 when Tsar Nicholas I invaded southwards into what today we call Romania, part of the failing Ottoman Empire of Turkey. He even destroyed the Turkish navy at the Battle of Sinope.

The French and the British piled in on behalf of the Turks, sending ultimatums to the tsar and more than 50,000 troops to the Black Sea.

The Sardinians and then the Austrians came aboard with the allies, and in August 1854 the Russians withdrew.

Yet the allies had all their troops in the Black Sea spoiling for a scrap, so they decided to destroy the Russian naval base at Sebastopol on the Crimean peninsula. They argued that Sebastopol was a threat to the Mediterranean and, anyway, the tsar had to be taught that his expansionism would not be tolerated.

The allies landed on the Crimea on September 14. Six days later they won a battle at Alma, which meant 25,000 Russians were besieged in Sebastopol.

As winter set in, the Russians tried to break out, drawing the allies into battles at Balaclava and Inkerman.

It was at Balaclava, on October 25, that the infamous charge of the Light Brigade took place which, 150 years later, is still a byword for military stupidity and blind obedience.

Lord Raglan ordered Lord Lucan to stop the Russians from removing cannons they had captured up on some high ground. So Lord Lucan sent Lord Cardigan’s Light Brigade charging down a valley, where they ran into a wall of fire from a Russian stronghold. A third of the 673 British cavalrymen fell as casualties.

Despite this shocking incompetence, in October 1855, with the tsar dead, the Russians abandoned Sebastopol – and their expansionist ambitions for at least a generation.

They also abandoned their cannons and, in 1857, the British Government offered these spoils of war to any British town wanting a war memorial.

In August 1857, the Darlington Board of Health voted to request two cannons. It was a poorly attended meeting, with many of the town’s ruling Quakers absent, and the motion passed with a majority of one. The Quakers, led by the Pease family, were implacable pacificists, and would never have voted for a memorial to a war.

The Government sent a single cannon. Some wanted it displayed in the Market Square, others in the churchyard, as Middlesbrough had.

During the debate, the Quakers regrouped and ensured the cannon was quietly forgotten about in a corner of South Park.

There it remained until June 1860, local newspapers received some remarkable letters – written by ‘the cannon’ itself.

Fed up with its lot, the cannon complained about its neglected position.

"The reptiles of the Earth take up their abode in what was once my chamber of destruction, " it thundered.

"Birds twitter saucily and with inquisitive eye peer into the dark recesses of my interior, and the worms hold nightly revels in the hollow region of my iron heart.

"Now, Mr Editor, who could stand it? I won't; I can't. . . if they don't move me soon, I'll blow up!"

The issue blew up at the next board of health meeting.

Fourteen members were present, at least nine from the Quaker camp including, in the chair, their leader Joseph Pease.

The non-Quakers, led by John Wrightson, landlord of The Sun Inn, in Prospect Place, said the cannon’s condition was an insult to all our brave boys who had sacrificed their lives in the Crimea. Pease disagreed.

“Laying where it was, the chairman said he thought it was a most beautiful emblem of peace, for he had actually seen lambs feeding close to the muzzle of the gun, a remark which was received with loud laughter,” reported the Darlington Telegraph - an avowedly anti-Pease weekly paper.

But the cannon remained surrounded by sheep. The following spring, in exasperation, it wrote once more, telling of the gruesome sights it had witnessed at Sebastopol and bemoaning its “cruel neglect”.

The May 1861 board meeting discussed the cannon’s predicament. Its supporters were outraged that the Peases could block a democratic decision for four years simply because they didn’t like it.

John Pease, Joseph’s elder brother, was mocked when he said that mounting the cannon in the park would be an insult to every Russian.

Before the matter could be put to the vote, Joseph Pease “vacated the chair”. No vote could be taken.

But, mysteriously, the Sebastopol gun was soon – quietly and without ceremony – resited in the park.

There it stands today, with the tiniest of plaques to tell its story – possibly because the leading townspeople thought its story was too bloody, or possibly because it reminded them of their embarrassing defeat.

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