MAJOR-GENERAL Sir Henry Havelock is one of the North-East's greatest war heroes - a reputation he won in a revolution sparked by cows' fat.

He was born at Ford Hall, Bishopwearmouth, on April 5, 1795, the son of a wealthy Sunderland shipbuilder. His mother came from Stockton.

He joined the Army aged 20 and was sent to India eight years later, but it was struggle for him to reach the top. Despite serving with distinction in the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824-26) and in the First Afghan War (1839-42), he was not able to rise above the rank of captain. Many put this down to his religious upbringing, which caused him to preach regularly to his men - something that did not make him too popular.

The 1850s were better for him. He was promoted to quartermaster-general and then to general. Then, in 1857, the Indian Mutiny broke out.

Indian troops in the British Army were ordered to use cows' and pigs' fat to grease cartridges for their Enfield rifles. Both Muslims and Hindus were deeply offended by the instruction, and mutinied against the dictatorial British rule.

Henry Havelock, and his son Harry, were in Persia at the time. With 1,940 men, they marched towards the town of Cawnpore which had been captured. In nine days in the hottest part of the year, they covered 126 miles - one of the most gruelling forced marches in British history.

"Soldiers . . . your valour will not be forgotten by your grateful country," Havelock told his men.

Between July 12 and August 16, they fought two pitched battles and seven skirmishes against a native army four times their number, better equipped and fanatically brave. But Havelock won them all, and he became a hero back home for winning victories at a time when the war was going badly.

On September 25, Havelock and just 250 survivors staggered into the town of Lucknow, 45 miles from Cawnpore, to rescue a British garrison that had found itself surrounded.

But now the hero Havelock found himself besieged, as the Indians closed in on him.

However, Havelock's victories had broken the back of the Mutiny and, on November 17, Lucknow was relieved. But it came too late for the hero. A week later, he died of dysentry and was buried beneath a mango tree, unable to collect his knighthood.

However, his son Harry took up the fight and so brave was he in the battle for Cawnpore that he was awarded the Victoria Cross. In 1858, he was also given a baronetcy as a compensation for the knighthood his father had never been able to collect.

After a distinguished military career, in 1880 Sir Harry inherited Blackwell Grange in Darlington from his cousin, Mr R H Allan - on condition that he took the Allan family's surname.

Now called Sir Harry Havelock-Allan, he occupied himself in affairs of the North-East, becoming MP for Sunderland and a JP for County Durham.

But the lure of the East proved too much and, in 1897, at the age of 67, he returned to India, only to be killed in the Khyber Pass.

"These two brave men - father and son - lie in soldiers' graves in a foreign land far from their Durham home, but their memory lives on whenever tales of heroism are told," said The Northern Echo's sister paper, the Northern Despatch in 1973.

And their names still live on in the region. There are Havelock streets and pubs in the Darlington area, and in Sunderland there are Havelock hospitals and schools. In St Cuthbert's Church, Darlington, there is a memorial to Henry Havelock, and in Mowbray Park, Sunderland, there is a statue of him.

It was unveiled on April 5, 1861, in front "of the greatest multitude of people ever assembled" in Sunderland.

The statue was made by William Behnes, who became the first sculptor to use a photograph when making a likeness.

Behnes made two bronze casts of the statue. The second went to Sir Henry Havelock's home town of Sunderland; the first went to the capital of the nation, London.

It has stood in Trafalgar Square since 1861, troubled only by pigeons - until someone suggested it was time for a change