The Alameda Gardens were originally created for use by off duty British soldiers by General George Don in 1816 and raised through the proceeds of eight lotteries sanctioned by Don himself. A year earlier, General Don had commissioned a memorial of George Augustus Eliott, 1^st Baron Heathfield in the form of a colossal statue of General Eliott, carved from the bowsprit of the Spanish ship San Juan Nepomuceno captured during the Battle of Trafalgar. This wooden statue was placed was placed at the top of the Heathfield Steps, leading up to the south of Grand Parade.

Following the Duke of Wellington’s successful Peninsula campaign and decisive defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo on the 18^th June, 1815 it was decided to place a second monument in the gardens in honour of the ‘Iron Duke’. In this instance, the monument in the form bust was to funded by deducting a day’s pay from all the members of the garrison. The bust was cast in bronze from guns seized by the Duke of Wellington during the peninsular Campaign.

In April 1819, Sir George Don, accompanied by the Naval, Military and Civil officers of the Garrison, assembled at the gardens to unveil the bust of The Duke of Wellington. A Guard of Honour and four bands attended. The memorial to the Duke of Wellington was placed on top of a Roman marble pillar which had been brought from the ruins of Lepida (Lybia).

Around Wellington’s column stand two 13-inch mortars with shells and a 1758 bronze 12 pounder gun on a wooden carriage.

Wellington Monument by J.M. Carter 1846.

Wellington memorial Alameda Gardens Benjamin Browning 1861.

The 13-inch mortars

Descended from the stubby, large-bore mediaeval bombards, mortars were relatively short, large-calibre artillery pieces designed to fire the largest, heaviest projectiles on the highest possible trajectories.

Unlike guns or howitzers that were mounted on wheeled carriages, mortars were cast with their trunnions at the rear.

The Land Service 13-inch mortar was normally around 36 cwts and 3' 7.5" long. It fired a 200 lb shell to 2700 yards according to Rollo. They were normally fired at a fixed quadrant elevation of 45 degrees, the range being adjusted by varying the weight of the charge. Captain John Spilsbury writing during the 14^th Siege notes that these mortars were placed on a swivel platforms and later the depressing carriage principle was extended to mortar beds in order to avoid sacrificing range when fired from high positions. According to Spilsbury they became known as Rock Mortars.

Wellington monument showing 13-inch mortars, Benjamin Browning, 1861. Browning can be seen standing on the right.

13-inch Verbruggen howitzer.

The 12-pounder bronze cannon

The inscription on the cannon’s “base ring,” the band at the cannon’s widest diameter at its breech, is inscribed with the following words: W. BOWEN FECIT 1756. William Bowen was associated with the Royal foundry at Woolwich from 1741 onwards. The Latin word “Fecit” in this case means “made by” and the last four digits are the year the cannon was cast.

During the 18^th Century, gun founders were paid according to the mass of metal contained in each finished gun, so in order to get paid the gun founder marked the weight of each piece at the foundry specifying its weight and dimensions.

British cannons of this period were usually weighed and marked in “hundred weights” and fractions thereof. Counter-intuitively, a hundredweight equals 112 modern pounds, not 100 pounds and their weight was represented by three numbers, separated by dashes. In this case: 29-3-7. As it was necessary to give the cannon’s weight down to the nearest pound, the first digit tells the number of whole hundredweights (in this case 29 x 112 = 3,248 pounds), the second tells the number of quarter-hundredweights (3 x 28 = 84 pounds), and the third digit tells us that there 7 pounds left over. Therefore, the weight of the cannon amounted to 3,339 pounds.

The first reinforce bears the coat of arms of King George II of England and Hannover whilst the third reinforce bears the coat of arms of Charles Spencer, Third Duke of Marlborough who held the office of Master General of the Ordnance from December 21^st, 1755 to October 20^th, 1758. Both emblems bear the inscription HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE which translates as ‘Shame on he who thinks evil of it’. The inclusion of this inscription on both heraldic coats of arms indicate that the King and Charles Spencer were members of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, founded in 1348 by King Edward III as a noble fraternity consisting of the King, the Prince of Wales (or heir-apparent to the throne) and 24 Knights Companion. It is to this day the highest of the English chivalry orders, with a membership of under 30 people.

Guns were cast according to “patterns” specified by the military branch by whom they were ordered, so each gun in a series cast by a particular foundry would be numbered individually. The No. 6 on the gun’s right trunnion indicates that this gun was the sixth example of its pattern and batch cast by Bowen in 1756.²

William Bowen 12-pounder, 1756.

Base ring isncription: W, BOWEN FECIT 1756.

Coat of Arms of George II of England and Hannover.

Coat of Arms of Charles Spencer, Third Duke of Marlboroug.