1st Nothumbrian Brigade, Royal Field Artillery

It's been a while since I published regimental number sequences and so here are a few regimental numbers with corresponding joining dates for men of the 1st Northumbrian Brigade, Royal Field Artillery. This was a Territorial Force unit which comprised the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Northumbrian Batteries.  The range below covers the period 1908 until June 1915.

309 joined on 8th April 1908
637 joined on 17th May 1909
766 joined on 3rd April 1911
1005 joined on 28th April 1913
1159 joined on 4th August 1914
1233 joined on 31st August 1914
1527 joined on 6th January 1915
1630 joined on 10th February 1915
1794 joined on the 24th April 1915
2239 joined on 2nd June 1915

For those of you not familiar with how these sequences work, the idea is that you can use the dates above to gauge the joining date of your own 1st Northumbrian Brigade Ancestor.

If, for example, you know your man served with this unit and had the regimental number 1346, it would be reasonable to assume that he joined the regiment at some time between the 31st August 1914 and the 6th January 1915.  Note that there is a subtle difference between date of attestation and date of joining, and this becomes particularly important from late 1915 onwards. A man could attest under the Derby Scheme but his number would not be issued to him until he had been mobilised.

Note too, that men joining the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Northumbrian Brigades were all issued with numbers from different series allocated to each of these units. The sequence above is ONLY for the 1st Northumbrian Brigade. My recently re-bound volume of the 1909 Army List - which is an object of beauty in its own right - states that, in 1909 at least, this unit was headquartered at Barrack Road, Newcastle-upon-Tyne with the Duke of Northumberland as its Honorary Colonel

After the war, C H Ommaney wrote the Brigade history which these days is scarce but obtainable from around £75. At the time of writing, Turner Donovan books has a copy.

The image on this page shows RFA territorials, unit unknown.

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