The Victoria Cross.

The Victoria Cross (VC) is the highest award which the nation can bestow. It is awarded for “most conspicuous bravery, or some daring or pre-eminent act of valour or self-sacrifice, or extreme devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy,” and takes precedence over all other orders, decorations and medals.

The Victoria Cross was instituted by Royal Warrant on 29 January 1856, made retrospective to the autumn of 1854 to cover the Crimean War. Since then, the medal has been awarded 1,356 times to 1,353 individual recipients.

A total of 19 were serving with antecedent regiments of The Queen’s Lancashire Regiment when they won their award. It is a measure of the ultimate, self-denying, sacrificial  bravery required that over a quarter of them (five, plus a sixth who later succumbed to his wounds), did not survive the action for which they were awarded their Cross.

The Museum owns and cares for five Victoria Cross medals, of which three  (marked below with * ) are on display. Two more, those of Captain Marcus Ervine-Andrews and Private William Young, are on loan to the Blackburn Museum and Museum of Lancashire respectively.

This specially-commissioned composition shows 17 of the Regiment’s 19 Victoria Cross winners symbollically posed on the parade square of the Regiment’s traditional home at Fulwood Barracks, Preston. The painting hangs in the Museum. From left to right: Captain Marcus Ervine-Andrews 1940, 2nd Lieutenant Basil Horsfall 1918, Private William Ratcliffe 1917, Private William Young 1915, Private John McDermond 1854, Lieutenant Richard Jones 1916, Drummer Spencer John Bent 1914, Captain Euston Sartorious 1879, Colour Serjeant John Lucas 1861, 2nd Lieutenant Alfred Smith 1915, Private Henry Kenny 1915, Captain Mark Walker 1854, Lieutenant Thomas Wilkinson 1916, Private John Davies 1918, Private John Readitt 1917, 2nd Lieutenant Gabriel Coury 1916, Lieutenant Willward Sandys-Clarke 1943.