70mm ball mounted on a wooden base deeply inscribed ‘Sevastopol’; the underside applied with a plaque inscribed ‘Round shot picked up / by Captn Tottenham S.F. Guards in the advanced trenches of the / English Right Attack / the wood formed part of a / gun carriage the Russian Creek Battery.’ The whole raised on ball feet.
On 8 September 1855 the Scots Fusilier Guards were relieved in the trenches before the Russian held port city of Sebastopol by troops from the 2nd and Light Divisions in order to participate in another Allied assault on the Russian held port city of Sebastopol. The British attack failed, as did the French attacks on the Little Redan and the Central Bastion, but the latter’s assault on the Malakoff was successful and as this commanded all the others the Russians decided that further resistance was hopeless. During the night the Russian garrison pulled out to the north, blowing up key infra-structure as they went.
Lieutenant-Colonel Charles George Tottenham (1835-1918) was educated at Eton and was commissioned into the Scots Fusilier Guards in 1854. He appears to have arrived in the Crimea in the depths of winter aboard the P&O troopship Alma, and served there from 17 January through to the Fall Sebastopol (medal with clasp, 5th class Medjidie, and Turkish Crimea medal). In 1863 he won the by-election at New Ross, County Wexford which had been held by members of his family for generations. Moreover the Tottenhams owned most of New Ross. Tottenham was re-elected in 1865, but stood down at the 1868 election. He was returned to the House of Commons again a by-election in December 1878, following the death of the Home Rule League MP John Dunbar. However, he was defeated at the 1880 general election by another Home Rule candidate. Colonel Tottenham was a Deputy Lieutenant of County Wicklow, High Sheriff of Wexford in 1874 and Honorary Colonel of the Wicklow Rifles.