A VICTORIA Cross won by a Scot 160 years ago in India is expected to fetch up to £80,000 at auction next month.

Britain’s highest gallantry decoration was won by Gunner James Park for his bravery during the Relief of Lucknow in the Indian Mutiny in 1857.

Mr Park, from Glasgow, was chosen by his comrades in the Bengal Horse Artillery to receive the medal, but the Scots artilleryman died before it could be presented, aged just 23.

His Victoria Cross will be auctioned by medals specialists Dix Noonan Webb in London on September 27.

Mr Park, who was born in Barony in the city in 1835, worked as a labourer before enlisting into the Honourable East India Company Artillery in Glasgow in 1855.

He left for India on July 10, 1855, arriving in Calcutta the following October, where he was posted to 1st Troop, 1st Brigade Bengal Horse Artillery.

He served during the Indian Mutiny, the uprising against the rule of the British East India Company that broke out in May 1857.

In Lucknow, the British Residency was under siege from the outbreak until November that year when a column, including Mr Park’s brigade, reached the city and evacuated the defenders. The Bengal Artillery acted with great bravery and Mr Park and four others were chosen by comrades “for conspicuous gallantry”.

Mr Park, at 22, the youngest honoured, did not live to collect his Victoria Cross. He died of cholera at Lucknow on June 14, 1858 – six months before his award was officially announced.

The location of his grave in India is unknown, although he is commemorated on a memorial in the Royal Artillery Chapel in Woolwich.

Pierce Noonan, director of Dix Noonan Webb, said: “There is something very special about a Victoria Cross bestowed on a man as a result of a vote by those who had fought alongside him.

“These were soldiers who knew which of them had shown the greatest courage in the face of the enemy. There could be no suspicion of intervention by someone higher up the chain of command.”