Qualla: Russian Memorial, Lewes https://qualla.com/russian-memorial-lewes en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 23 Jul 2026 20:34:10 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/0/1/russian-memorial-lewes-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Russian Memorial, Lewes https://qualla.com/russian-memorial-lewes Russian Memorial, Lewes: Introduction https://qualla.com/russian-memorial-lewes/ Photo credit Struway, Public domain. Their names are difficult to read now, weathered into the sandstone of an obelisk standing in a churchyard a few hundred yards from where they died. Abraham Lindfors. Erik Kivi. Matts Mort. Twenty-eight names in all, mostly Finnish, mostly young. They were Russian soldiers in technical terms - the Grand Duchy of Finland was then part of the Russian Empire - but they were Finns by birth, by language and probably by allegiance, conscripted from villages around the Baltic into a regiment that found itself defending an island fortress against the British Royal Navy in the summer of 1854. They were captured, brought halfway across Europe, and died in an English town from tuberculosis and the damp of an old county gaol. In 1877 the Tsar paid for the obelisk that still marks the place.

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/0/1/russian-memorial-lewes-wp/u101-russian-memorial-lewes-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Russian Memorial, Lewes: How Finns Came to Lewes https://qualla.com/russian-memorial-lewes/ Photo credit Struway, Public domain. Britain declared war on Russia in March 1854. The Crimea was the main theatre, but a second front opened in the Baltic, where the Royal Navy was alarmed by the size of the Russian Baltic Fleet. In June a naval attack on the great Russian fortress of Bomarsund, in the Åland Island...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/0/1/russian-memorial-lewes-wp/u101-russian-memorial-lewes-how-finns-came-to-lewes.mp3 0:06 2 full Russian Memorial, Lewes: An Awkward Hospitality https://qualla.com/russian-memorial-lewes/ Photo credit Struway, Public domain. The Russian and Finnish officers were a curiosity for Lewes society. "Several of the leading gentlemen of the county" called on them, left their cards, took them riding on the South Downs; the officers were "delighted with the salubrity of the air." Their freedom of movement was ...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/0/1/russian-memorial-lewes-wp/u101-russian-memorial-lewes-an-awkward-hospitality.mp3 0:06 3 full Russian Memorial, Lewes: Twenty-Eight Deaths https://qualla.com/russian-memorial-lewes/ Photo credit Struway, Public domain. Tuberculosis took most of them. The damp old gaol, the close confinement, the unfamiliar food and the English winter combined to break men who had grown up in fishing villages and forests around the Gulf of Bothnia. By September 1855 fifteen prisoners had died. By the time peace ...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/0/1/russian-memorial-lewes-wp/u101-russian-memorial-lewes-twenty-eight-deaths.mp3 0:06 4 full Russian Memorial, Lewes: The Tsar's Obelisk https://qualla.com/russian-memorial-lewes/ Photo credit Struway, Public domain. Twenty-one years later, in 1877, Tsar Alexander II of Russia commissioned a memorial to the twenty-eight men buried at Lewes. The design was by Philip Currey and the stonework by John Strong, a local mason, executed in a neo-Gothic style suited to the parish churchyard setting. I...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/0/1/russian-memorial-lewes-wp/u101-russian-memorial-lewes-the-tsars-obelisk.mp3 0:06 5 full Russian Memorial, Lewes: A Song Sung in Lewes https://qualla.com/russian-memorial-lewes/ Photo credit Struway, Public domain. There is a popular Finnish folk song called Oolannin sota - the Crimean War song - which is still sung in Finland today. It evolved from an earlier ballad called Ålandin sota laulu (the Åland war song), and the words tell the story of Bomarsund, of capture, of imprisonment in far...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/0/1/russian-memorial-lewes-wp/u101-russian-memorial-lewes-a-song-sung-in-lewes.mp3 0:06 6 full