Another history lesson!

Sorry about this folks, but every time I go to Haverfordwest I take the same photograph with the intention of blipping it and every time I end up blipping something else instead. So, in order to get it out of my system once and for all, let me introduce you to someone who, at the time his image was placed here, would have been familiar, with his trademark red fez, to every passer-by. Now I doubt whether the few who even notice him, throttled as he is by an electricity cable high under the eaves of a shabby house, have any idea of his once-stellar reputation.

He is General Gordon of Khartoum. A Victorian military hero whose success at sorting out colonial troublespots (and there were many) made him indispensable to the government of the time and in demand to quell uprisings and broker peace agreements wherever the map was red. Clean-living, Christian and anti-slavery Charles Gordon became a folk hero. The easy luxuries of his class and station were unknown to him: his clothes verged upon the shabby; and his frugal meals were eaten at a table with a drawer, into which the loaf and plate were quickly swept at the approach of his poor visitors. The only book he read was the Bible. (He was also prone to outbursts of violent rage in which he would attack his servants.)

In 1884 he was sent to sort out an Islamic uprising in the Sudan and ended up beseiged in Khartoum with two British officials and 8000 local troops. Time wore on and back home public pressure mounted for a relief expedition to be sent but prime minister Gladstone prevaricated despite the intervention of Queen Victoria herself. After 10 months, with reinforcements two days away, the besiegers finally gained entry to the city. Gordon was hacked to death and his head paraded on a pole. His heroic stand was mythologized in a famous painting but the reality is likely to have been rather less glamorous.

In 1888 when this house was built Gordon's posthumous reputation would have been sky-high which is why his image must have been placed in such an elevated position by the builder. What is less well-known is that Gordon had a connection with Pembrokeshire way back in 1854 when, as a young lieutenant aged only 21, he was involved in the construction of military defences in the south of the county. It seems a little unfortunate that the memorial head which was intended as a tribute to the General looks quite so... severed.

The entire house can be seen here.