SATURDAY'S Memories is going to be partly about the history of Darlington's Mowden Hall, which the Department for Education seems to want to vacate because of high overheads.

Undoubtedly the most famous man to stay at Mowden Hall was Earl Frederick Roberts, the Baron of Kandahar. I last told this story in 2001, when it went like this:

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THE Taliban were the rulers of the city of Kandahar, in Afghanistan. It was their spiritual home, and it took much firepower to drive them out.

But Kandahar once had a Baron to rule it and, by a curious quirk of historical fate, that Baron of Kandahar was also the first freeman of the Borough of Darlington.

He was Earl Frederick Roberts, the first (and last) Baron of Kandahar, who today is most famous in Darlington for unveiling the South African War Memorial in St Cuthbert's churchyard in 1905.

But in his day, he was famed throughout the country for "curbing the unruly spirit of the treacherous Afghans, wiping out the memory of British defeats and bringing peace to the North West frontier".

Roberts was an Irishman who first came to prominence in the Indian Mutiny (1857-58) and really hit the headlines during the Second Afghan War (1878-80).

The Russians were making friendly overtures to Amir Sher Ali, the ruler of Afghanistan, which made the British extremely worried about the safety of India to the south of Afghanistan. The British sent troops to Kabul to remind the Afghans who was the boss of the sub-continent, but the people of Kabul rioted, beseiged the British residency and slaughtered all inside.

Such treachery could not go unpunished, and Major-General Roberts was ordered to march with 6,500 men from India to recapture Afghanistan.

A few miles from Kabul, Roberts routed the much larger Afghan army and made a triumphant entry into the capital city, where he tried and executed the rebel ringleaders.

However, the Afghan army regrouped and Roberts decided to withdraw from Kabul to Sherpur, to the north of the city. He divided his army, and at Maiwand 2,000 of his men were surprised by a sudden Afghan attack. There were 1,330 casualties on the British side, and the survivors fled to Kandahar, closely followed by the Afghans, who beseiged them in the city.

Roberts regrouped and on August 8, 1879, he set out from Kabul to rescue his men. He covered more than 300 miles in 20 days, arriving at Kandahar on August 28.

He relieved his men, and then, on September 1, he launched a vicious attack on the Afghans, driving them from their trenches.

For a while, Afghanistan was under British control, and Maj Gen Roberts was a national hero.

In 1892, in recognition of his achievement, he was created Baron of Kandahar.

Roberts went on to win more titles and honours during the Second Boer War (1899-1902) and was made Commander-in-Chief of the British Army.

Naturally, such an important person was the first to be invited to visit one of the British's greatest engineering feats in Africa: the Victoria Falls Bridge, built by the Darlington firm of Cleveland Bridge.

William Pease, of Mowden Hall, was the director of the firm who supervised the Victoria Falls contract. When Roberts arrived on site in 1904, it was William who took him across the gorge in a cage suspended from a steel rope so he could see the last stages of the construction.

As they neared the middle of the waterfall, William jokingly threatened to throw the war hero out of the cage unless he promised to come to Darlington to unveil the planned South African War Memorial.

So, in August 1905, Earl Roberts found himself as guest of honour at Mowden Hall.

On the morning of August 5 he processed in an open carriage to Central Hall (now part of the Dolphin Centre) where he was made the first freeman of the borough.

From his place on the stage, Roberts spotted Sergeant Thomas Coates, of Yarm Road, in the audience. Thomas was wearing the star he had been given for marching with Roberts from Kabul to Afghanistan nearly 30 years earlier.

The speechifying over, Roberts marched behind a military band to the churchyard, where he unveiled the newly built war memorial.

"The scene, with Lord Roberts in his field marshal's uniform, his breast covered in medals and orders, the members of the corporation in their robes, the volunteers in their uniforms, the members of the fire brigade, and spectators on the grandstands, the venerable church tower, roofs and windows, and filling the streets as far as the eye could reach, and the memorial as the central point, was one of the most impressive ever beheld in Darlington," enthused the Darlington and Stockton Times.

The ceremony over, the First Baron of Kandahar, and the First Freeman of the Borough of Darlington, left on the 4pm train out of Bank Top.