War Memorials and Culture Wars in Mid-Nineteenth Century Sunderland

This article looks at two forms of war memorial installed in Sunderland’s Mowbray Park after the Crimean War and the Indian Rebellion: captured Russian cannons and a statue of the most famous British commander in India, General Henry Havelock. Although unveiled only four years apart, in 1857 and 1861, the memorials had strikingly different gestations and receptions: the Crimean War ‘memorial’ caused significant contestation within the local political and civic arena, attracting only several thousand spectators to a disorganised unveiling ceremony; conversely, the statue to General Henry Havelock unified Sunderland’s body politic, its unveiling witnessed by up to 100,000 people. This article analyses the organisational processes of the memorials and the narratives they sought to convey—and in the case of the Crimean cannons, why they caused serious controversy—in order to determine why the outcomes were so different. It argues that the memorials were by-products of contemporaneous struggles occurring within civic society and their failure or success depended on uniting the disparate status groups, religious denominations and political wings of the middle-class elite.