The 4th Lancashire Artillery Volunteers, later renamed to the 4th West Lancashire Brigade, known as 'The Old 4th', was a part-time unit of the British Army's Royal Artillery founded in Liverpool in 1859. It served on the Western Front during World War I, one of its members winning the Victoria Cross at Cambrai. Between the world wars the unit pioneered mechanical traction methods. During World War II it formed three regiments that saw action at Dunkirk, in East Africa, on Crete, at Tobruk (where one of its regiments was captured), in Burma, and in the final campaigns in Italy and North West Europe. It continued in the post-war Territorial Army until 1973.
Volunteer Force
Origin
The enthusiasm for the Volunteer movement following an invasion scare in 1859 saw the creation of many units composed of part-time soldiers eager to supplement the Regular British Army in time of need. One of the first and largest such units was the 4th Lancashire Artillery Volunteers, raised by the Liverpool shipowner James Walter and drawing its recruits from clerks and office personnel of firms in that city. Six hundred Volunteers marched from Birchfield Barracks to St George's Hall, Liverpool, on 22 November 1859 to take the oath of allegiance. The unit officially came into existence on 5 December and its first headquarters (HQ) was at the Liverpool and London Insurance Company office in Dale Street, with a store in a private house at 51 Salisbury Street. The first commanding officer (CO) was Lieutenant-Colonel James Bourne (appointed 7 January 1860), a local merchant and colliery owner who was also Lt-Col Commandant of the Royal Lancashire Artillery Militia. The corps had an establishment of a brigade of eight companies, termed batteries from 1861.
By 1862 the 4th Lancashire AV had accepted 50–60 mechanics 'of the highest class' to supplement the middle-class clerks of the original recruits. In 1861 the unit's arms store was moved to 49 Mason Street, and by 1872 its HQ was at 52 Mason Street, where there was a large storage shed. In 1880 it was in Nos 21, 23 and 25 Mason Street and by 1890 at 22 Highgate Street, Edge Hill, Liverpool.
When the Volunteer corps were consolidated in 1880, the unit was offered a more senior number, but chose to retain the proud title of 'The 4th Brigade'.
Equipment
The 4th Lancashire AVC began their gun drill using chairs, a stove-pipe and mops, then graduated to wooden models. In September 1861 the War Office (WO) ordered that the unit should be issued with eight 24-pounder guns. These weapons were unserviceable and apparently did not arrive until a year later. The WO refused to supply traversing platforms, so Major George Melly (who became CO in 1863) had two guns mounted on sliding carriages and traversing platforms, and presented them to the unit. An organisation called the Mount Vernon Green Syndicate provided money for the unit to purchase four brass 9-pounder field guns, without carriages or limbers. Equipment varied during the corps' history: in 1878 it had eight 24-pdr and two 32-pdr smooth-bore muzzle-loading (SBML) guns on upright carriages, and one 40-pdr Armstrong rifled breech-loader (RBL). In 1885 it possessed an additional 64-pdr rifled muzzle-loader (RML) converted from a bored-out 8-inch gun and fitted with an inner 'A' tube.
The AVCs were intended to serve as garrison artillery manning fixed defences, but a number of the early units manned semi-mobile 'position batteries' of smooth-bore field guns pulled by agricultural horses. However, the WO refused to pay for the upkeep of field guns and the concept died out in the 1870s. It was revived in 1888 when some Volunteer batteries were reorganised as 'position artillery' with 16-pounder RML guns to work alongside the Volunteer infantry brigades. The 4th Lancashire AVC was issued with four of these guns in 1889, and the experiment was so successful that within three years the corps had four such batteries.
Royal Garrison Artillery
In 1882 all the AVCs were affiliated to one of the territorial garrison divisions of the Royal Artillery (RA) and the 4th Lancashires became part of the Lancashire Division. In 1889 the structure was altered, and the corps joined the Southern Division. In 1899 the RA was divided into separate field and garrison branches, and the artillery volunteers were all assigned to the Royal Garrison Artillery (RGA). In 1902 their titles were changed, the Liverpool unit becoming the 4th Lancashire Royal Garrison Artillery (Volunteers), designated as heavy artillery. The following year the position batteries were redesignated as heavy batteries.