1st Hampshire Engineers
military unit
The 1st Hampshire Engineer Volunteer Corps was first formed in 1862 and then reformed in 1891 with special responsibility for the port defences of the South Coast of England. It carried out this role during World War I, as well as forming field units that served on the Western Front and at Salonika. Before the outbreak of World War II it formed an air defence regiment that saw service during The Blitz and field companies that fought in the Western Desert and Italy, The unit continued in the postwar Territorial Army before finally disbanding in 1967.
Early history
The enthusiasm for the Volunteer movement following an invasion scare in 1859 saw the creation of many local Rifle, Artillery and Engineer Volunteer units composed of part-time soldiers eager to supplement the Regular British Army in time of need. One of these was the 1st Hampshire Engineer Volunteer Corps (1st Hants EVC) based at Southampton. The first officers' commissions for the unit were issued on 25 January 1862. As a small, single company corps, it was attached for convenience to the 2nd Hampshire Rifle Volunteer Corps (RVC) in 1863, and both came under the 4th Administrative Battalion of Hampshire Rifle Volunteers in 1865.
In 1870, the unit was attached to the 2nd Tower Hamlets EVC in London rather than the local rifle units. Under the mobilisation scheme in force in 1880, the 1st Hants EVC formed part of the Garrison Army, assigned to defend the important naval base of Portsmouth, along with detachments from EVCs as far away as Yorkshire, Lancashire and Northamptonshire. However, the 1st Hants EVC was disbanded in 1881 and the volunteers absorbed by the 2nd Hampshire RVC.
Reformed unit
A new 1st Hampshire Engineer Volunteers was formed at Portsmouth on 1 April 1891.
“1st Hampshire Engineers” enters the record as military unit. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Hampshire, Engineers and military can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “1st Hampshire Engineers” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.