The Hampshire Volunteers

DID THE 4TH BATTALION HAMPSHIRE REGIMENT ORIGINATE IN YATELEY?

FACT OR FICTION? - FACT (almost)

The 15th Hants (Yateley) Rifle Volunteers were formed in 1860 by the efforts of George Mason of Yateley Manor. The Yateley Volunteers were not the first Corps to be formed in Hampshire: the very first Corps was formed in Winchester some six months earlier. However the Yateley Volunteers were quickly amalgamated wih others in Hampshire to become the 1st Administrative Battalion Hampshire Rifle Volunteers. Later, as the 1st Volunteer Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment, they became the foremost voluntary battalion in the British Army under the leadership of Colonel Sir Thomas Sturmy Cave VD. Cave, the son of William Cave who owned the brewery in Hartley Wintney, was the direct descendant of the William Cave who purchased Monteagle House in 1617. About 1908 the 1st Volunteer Battalion became the 4th Battalion, Hampshire Regiment, with recruitment initially from north east Hampshire. At the start of the First World War, still commanded by a Yateley man Colonel Bernard Stilwell, half of the battalion were sent to Quetta to defend the borders of India and Afganistan. The other half was sent to Mesopotamia, which we now call Iraq, where they fought savage battles against the Turks.

To celebrate the first National Local History Week and the 21st anniversary of the Yateley Society three members introduced topics covered by the Society’s 2002 exhibition then mounted in Yateley Library. The keynote speaker was Chris Bunch whose talk Defending Quetta with the 4th Hampshires told the story of his father and the 4th Hampshires as they were sent to defend that part of the Raj now known as Pakistan, on the Afghanistan border. Meticulously researched from the battalion magazine published in Quetta where the 4th Hampshires were based, Chris' father's war evoked parallels with the current wars in Iraq and Afganistan. To illustrate his talk Chris used picture postcards sent back to his family by his father, and rather incredibly, the photographs which Cyril Bunch took on his own Box Brownie while serving. Chris's slides and story vividly brought to life the part played by Yateley men in the Great War -- not the least, revealing for the first time, the real people behind some of those names read out each November from the Yateley Cenotaph.

Page created by Peter Tipton March 2008 from the Library Lecture Poster, and revised March 2009 on the advice of Chris Bunch, the Society's military historian.