Uniform help please - quality photo!

[BillyH]

This sergeant appears to be in the Cheshire Volunteers so the photo must be pre 1908?  However he did serve in the Great War.

Can any of the Forum experts e.g.  @FROGSMILE please give me chapter and verse on the various badges on show, especially above and below the Sergeants stripes?

BillyH.

Edited 10 January by BillyH

[FROGSMILE]

6 hours ago, BillyH said:

This sergeant appears to be in the Cheshire Volunteers so the photo must be pre 1908?  However he did serve in the Great War.

Can any of the Forum experts e.g.  @FROGSMILE please give me chapter and verse on the various badges on show, especially above and below the Sergeants stripes?

BillyH.

Lovely photo thank you for posting it.

He wears the full dress rank badge of a 2nd volunteer battalion Cheshire Rifle Volunteers Colour Sergeant, but in the line regiment style of crossed union flags above three stripes**.  Above his rank badge is the 4-point ‘proficiency star’ indicating that he had attended and passed the course of instruction for a senior NCO of volunteers.  These were military skills competencies like drill, map reading and musketry, plus subjects like camp discipline and routine procedures.  Underneath his rank badge is a musketry prize badge of crossed rifles surmounted by a Victorian crown.

His uniform is grey, one of three options for volunteers at that time (scarlet, rifle green, or grey) and he wears the equivalent of a regular line sergeants worsted sash, which in rifles styled units like the volunteers was a leather pouch belt.  This latter was usually black if the uniform was green and brown if it was grey, although some of the latter wore black too (it was white if the uniform was scarlet).  The facings were scarlet.

The pouch belts invariably featured a fine regimental badge on the front and a more simple badge on the pouch itself at back. This latter too was the same colour and originally had carried ammunition, but it’s origin was in emulation of light cavalry, whose style of uniform light infantry and rifles units had adopted.

His regiment is as you say Cheshire Rifle Volunteers and known as “The Cheshire Greys”.  In the 1880s they became a volunteer battalion of the Cheshire Regiment, and in 1908 a Territorial Force battalion.  I would date the photo to around the turn of the century.

**the rifles pattern (more common amongst volunteer units) comprised an arrangement of crossed swords and bugle (or double bugle depending upon date) above three stripes.  This was intended because rifles units did not traditionally carry colours because they invariably deployed in open order formation. 

 

 

Edited 10 January by FROGSMILE

[BillyH]

Superb reply Frogsmile, as always ! 

BillyH.

[FROGSMILE]

9 hours ago, BillyH said:

Superb reply Frogsmile, as always ! 

BillyH.

The CSjt in your photo’s collar badge reflects that the battalion concerned was the Earl of Chester’s and the Earl of Chester was the Prince of Wales.

For that reason the 2nd Volunteer Battalion of the Cheshire Regiment’s (Earl of Chester’s) collar badge was the Prince of Wales’s feathers.  Stooks of corn were the other main insignia motif.  Three stooks in a downpointing triangle was the arms of the Earl of Chester.

They became the 5th (Earl of Chester’s) TF Battalion of the Cheshire Regiment in 1908.  Although starting with the PofW feathers as with all the TF battalions the regulars collar badge of an acorn sprig was eventually adopted.

 

Edited 11 January by FROGSMILE