Yarm house bears a plaque which marks where hero once lived

A PLAQUE fixed to the wall of a house in Yarm commemorates Tom Brown, hero of The Battle of Dettingen.

The plaque on the house in Yarm. Picture: SARAH CALDECOTT

Maybe you’ve never heard of Tom Brown. But his bravery in that battle made him a hero and the toast of the entire nation

On June 27, 1743, during the War of the Austrian Succession, King George II became the last English monarch to lead his army into battle.

One of his soldiers at Dettingen that day was a man called Thomas Brown, who had been born at Kirkleatham, near Redcar, probably in 1705.

Little is known of his early years, but it is thought his family lived in a small cottage near what is now the entrance to Sir William Turner’s Almshouses.Brown served an apprenticeship to a shoemaker in Yarm. Later, he joined the Army, and,by 1743, he was a private in the King’s Own Dragoons.

His fame stems from his part in saving the regiment’s remaining standard from capture at the Battle of Dettingen, in south west Germany.

After losing two fingers by a sabre cut trying to dismount his horse, Brown saw the captured standard being carried away by an enemy gendarme. He attacked the man and killed him.

Catching the standard as it fell, he cut his way back through the ranks of the enemy – receiving seven wounds to his head, face and body and losing part of his nose in the process.

In his hacked condition, he brought the standard back and when he rejoined the regiment his fellow dragoons gave him ‘three Huzzahs’.

King George II was so impressed, he knighted Brown on the battlefield, and the gallant soldier became renowned across the country for his bravery.

Artists painted and engraved his portrait and the officers of the 3rd Hussars had a figure of him sculptured in silver, as a trophy for the dining-room table. The King personally gave him a silver nose and a gold headed walking stick for his deeds.

How badly damaged his nose had been is not clear but his face was certainly dreadfully disfigured – his portraits show a cut across the nose and his lips appear to be distorted.

Brown retired to Yarm, with a King’s pension of £30 a year where he settled down with his silver nose and his walking stick to run a High Street pub.

His fame spread far and wide and in the Middlesbrough archives is a typewritten copy of a poem that tells of his adventures – but his time as a publican was short-lived.

A description of him in his Yarm years describes him as “a tall man with a bony figure, a broad chest, and the wreck of a resolute countenance”.

John Andrews, one of his contemporaries, asserted that the Dragoon “did kill himself by drinking” and he was buried in tin an unmarked grave in the churchyard of St Mary Magdalene in Yarm.

In 1968, Brown’s own regiment righted this particular wrong by erecting a gravestone outside the east end of Yarm parish church.

The headstone erected in 1968 in memory of Tom Brown by the Dragoons

The brick-built house in which he lived in his final years – an inn until it lost its licence in 1908 – still stands on the north side of Yarm High Street.

The blue tourist plaque attached is a reminder of his daring and his fame.