In a message dated 08/07/2009 00:30:11 GMT Daylight Time, brucemoorhouse@sympatico.ca writes: I got a picture of St. Nicholas' church, Durham City, off of the Internet and noted a couple of statues out in front. One of a man on a horse and the other I'm not quite sure. Can anyone tell me who these statues represent? They are not so much connected with the church itself as ornaments to the Market Place, within which the church is located. The "man on a horse" is the 3rd Marquis of Londonderry, Charles William Vane-Stewart (1775-1854); born 1775 May 18; married (1) 1804 Aug 8 Catherine (-1812; daughter of John, 3rd Earl of Darnley; died 1812 Feb 11); 1814: created Baron Stewart; married (2) 1819 Apr 3 Frances Ann Emily Vane-Tempest (1800-1865; daughter of Sir Henry [1771-1813; 2nd Bt]; d 1865 Jan 20); 1821: assumed surname Vane; 1822: succeeded as 3rd Marquis of Londonderry; 1823: created Earl Vane and Viscount Seaham; d 1854 Mar 6. Lord Londonderry spent much of his life trying to build up the large landed and colliery estate in Co Durham, which he inherited through his wife, including the creation and development the town of Seaham Harbour, to which he had most of his coal sent for export, to avoid the excessive dues charged by the River Wear Commissioners. He spent so much on this that certain historians and others in Co Durham have in the past taken him as an example of a man as rich as Croesus. However, he was hardly ever without financial problems and had to do a lot of "juggling with his money" to keep himself solvent. Being an employer of so many men in his mines, and those men having often to work in conditions which were poor, even when compared to those in other mines, he is often painted as the archetypical unfeeling, hard, Victorian employer, whereas the truth is he usually simply could not afford either to improve the conditions in his pits or to pay his workers more. I put the words "man on a horse" into quotes because that was exactly the same description used by an uncle of mine, from Ryton, who joined the Army (DLI) in 1917 (he had been in a reserved occupation until then), and who, with other recruits was sent to Durham, where they formed up in the Market Place, and up Claypath, before being marched across to the Railway Station prior to being taken away to the joys of their basic traiining camp, and then to France. He had time, however, to send his mother a post-card from Durham saying "We formed up beside thon statue of a man on a horse and right up thon street behind". The other "statue" is a figure of Neptune, created a long time ago and placed in the Market Place before eventually being removed to a public park. All that was a long time ago, but a few years ago it was decided to bring it back from the park and replace it in the Market Place. See R W Sturgess "Aristocrat in Business: the Third Marquis of Londonderry as Coalowner and portbuilder" (Durham County Local History Society, 1975, ISBN 0 902958 02 X). See also The Londonderry Papers, a major deposit in Durham County Record Office, covering many topics, including Deeds, Colliery management, the development of Seaham Harbour, Railway management and the political and diplomatic papers of other members of that family, including Viscount Castlereagh. The family also owned Wynyard Hall, in the southern part of Co Durham, and kept it, along with their London house, until the 1960s, after which it became the home of ex-coal miner, property developer and owner of Newcastle United (in the days when that was not an insult!) Sir John Hall. Geoff Nicholson