Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The group of four miniature dress medals worn by Colour Sergeant G. W. Evernden, Rifle Brigade

Crimea 1854-56, 1 clasp, Sebastopol; Indian Mutiny 1857-59, 1 clasp, Lucknow; India General Service 1854-95, 1 clasp, North West Frontier; Turkish Crimea, Sardinian issue, all with contemporary silver top-riband buckles, good very fine and better (4) £240-£280

George William Evernden was born in Westminster, London, in 1834. He attested for the Rifle Brigade at Westminster in June 1854, and served with the 2nd Battalion in the Crimea. Arriving in the Crimea on Christmas Day 1854, he soon contracted Typhus, and was sent to hospital on 8 January 1855. After a month in hospital he was discharged to the convalescent depot, before returning to his battalion, where he was in action in the trenches before Sebastopol, the assaults on the Quarries, and in the attacks on the Grand Redan:
‘On the 7th of June [1855] we made an attack on the enemy’s works and took the quarries from them... The quarries was a Battery in front of the Redan and was called the quarries by us on account of it being built up mainly with stone. And it got the name of the slaughter house on account of so many men getting killed in it.
A few nights before we took this place, I was standing up on the look out over the trench behind the gabions... So I was behind these, a gun was fired, I saw the flash and bobbed and give the word to look out. When before the last word was out I was sprawling on the ground covered with earth. The shot had struck between the two where I was standing and pushed. I might say, knocked them in and sent me flying. But however I managed to drag myself up and found that I was not much hurt... These quarries was a horrid place to do duty in. We were rather too close to the enemy to be comfortable. And they had a knack of throwing a lot of small 7 lb shot of a mortar very near straight up and letting them come down amongst us... One night a shell was coming down and a man named King was watching it till it fell on his head and blew it all away. When we come to look there was only a cotton handkerchief round his neck and burning but not a bit of his head left.
On the 18th of June we made a great attack on the Great Redan Battery and lost my own Regiment over 200 men. Other Regiments losing great numbers. In fact it was a most Bloody affair and we had to retire. And for days the stench of the dead was almost unbearable. Being in the heat of Summer so that bodies so soon got decomposed.’ (recipient’s own account refers)

Evernden subsequently transferred to the 3rd Battalion for service in India, served with the battalion during the Great Sepoy Mutiny, and on the North West Frontier, and was advanced to Colour Sergeant. He died in St. Neots, Cambridgeshire, on 11 July 1916.

Sold with a brass plaque upon which is engraved ‘Colour Sergeant G. W. Evernden. The Rifle Brigade’.

For the recipient’s full-sized awards, see Lot 757.