The above is a painting by the Russian painter Ivan Aivazovsky (1817 – 1900). It’s a representation of the Battle of Sinop where on the 30th November 1853, Russian warships destroyed Ottoman naval vessels anchored off the northern Turkish port of Sinop. This was the event which triggered the Crimean War, a war with which our area has connections in the form of street names such as Raglan Road and Cathcart Street, named after Crimean War commanders, and Cannon Walk on Woodhouse Moor, named after the two Russian cannon that were placed on the Moor in 1857. The guns were subsequently removed during the Second World War to be melted down as part of the war effort. In his Yorkshire Diary column two weeks ago, Yorkshire Evening Post columnist Neil Hudson recalled Reginald Rivers’ story of how he used to play on the cannon as a child and later had the sad task of feeding the smashed remains of the cannon into the furnace at Greenwood and Batley’s on Armley Road.