The heroic 'cannon-ball' lights were commissioned for the ancient Brudenell family seat at Deene, Northamptonshire by Lt. Gen. James Thomas Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan (d. 1868), whose gallantry as leader of the celebrated Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava in the Crimea in 1854 established him as a national hero. At the time of his promotion as Lieutenant-General in 1861, he created a banqueting hall at Deene, with these lights serving to reflect his 'military merit'. It followed the magnificent banqueting gallery created by the 1st Duke of Marlborough at Blenheim Palace, and that created by the 1st Duke of Wellington at Apsley House, Hampshire. The Earl of Cardigan employed the court decorator John Diblee Crace (d. 1918) to supervise its decoration in the romantic mediaeval manner or 'National' style that his father John Gregory Crace (d. 1889) had assisted A.W.N. Pugin (d. 1852) to introduce at the New Palace of Westminster.
The 'Cardigan' wall-lights celebrate the Roman concept that 'Agriculture flourishes when arms and armour are laid down', and are designed in the Louis Douze fashion popularised by A.W.N. Pugin's Gothic Furniture in the Style of the Fifteenth Century, 1835 and Foliated Ornament, 1849. Cannon-balls, crowned by Cardigan coronets, are tied by fretted ribbons, that are flowered with crystal-jewelled roses. They are tied to rose-branches that are finialed by crystal balls, and to large roses issuing from their richly foliated and fretted plates. A very likely maker for the wall-lights is the important Birmingham 'mediaeval metalworkers' established as John Hardman & Co. who had executed the splendid brass fittings for the New Palace of Westminster in the late 1850s (see I. Ross (ed.), The Houses of Parliament, History, Art, Architecture, London, 2000). Their design may well have been executed by John Hardman Powell (d. 1895), who had trained alongside Pugin.