ONLY a couple of weeks ago a visitor at The Heritage Centre asked to be directed to Trumpet Major Smith's grave in St John's churchyard.

Perhaps the 150th anniversary of The Charge of the Light Brigade brought this old soldier to mind.

There would have been no memorial of him if a military enthusiast had not collected funds about 10 years ago and arranged for the War Graves Commission to provide a stone which was placed close to the grave of another soldier - Sergeant-Major Thomas Mullin.

The two men enjoyed a yeomanry dinner at The Windmill, Tabley, in 1872 when Mullin reminisced that he had volunteered for service in India but had not been sent there.

He told guests that it must have been because he was too handsome, to which Smith wryly replied that he was sent out a month after he enlisted.

His medals included two with seven clasps for battles in the Afghan and Sikh wars (1842-9). He had also survived the Charge, even though his horse was shot from under him, so he had many tales to tell and thrilled Knutsford companions with his recitation of his own poem, written on Balaclava Heights

In Tabley House archives there is a telegram sent by the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary for War to Lady de Tabley, saying: 'Your brother is safe'.

Rodolph de Salis led the 11th Hussars into the Charge and his letter to his sister began: 'I have reason to be thankful to Divine Providence in having been one of the few Light Cavalry officers who escaped the day before yesterday.

'We had a most serious disaster. We all of us went knowing it was to certain destruction as well as quite unavailing.'

He added: 'Lord Cardigan has certainly evinced himself good in action but it requires an enemy before and a few cannon shells to make him bearable.'

He and Smith were at the 21st anniversary Balaclava Banquet on 25 October 1875.

Smith had replied to his invitation: 'I intend coming, paying all expenses or not, that will not keep me from once more coming up to London to shake hands with my dear, old brother comrades of the Six Hundred.'

The expense might have been a problem because he had been discharged from the Army after 25 years' service with a gratuity of £5.

An inquest into his death, aged 57, returned a verdict of death by apoplexy, accelerated by laudanum, taken by the deceased whilst of unsound mind.

This might have been why there was no gravestone or known plot for him in the graveyard.

Another much respected old soldier, who also came to the town after his military career to serve with the Cheshire Yeomanry, was Captain Henry Hill, a veteran of the battle of Waterloo, who is buried at Cross Town Church yard.

He was Mrs Gaskell's model for Captain Brown in Cranford.

His son, known as Major Hill, was a solicitor and magistrate in the town who never served in the Army but followed his father into the Yeomanry.