The Westmorland and Cumberland Yeomanry was a Yeomanry Cavalry regiment of the British Army with its origins in 1798. The regiment provided troops for the Imperial Yeomanry during the Second Boer War and served on the Western Front in the First World War, latterly as infantry. The regiment converted to artillery in 1920 and served as such in the early years of the Second World War, before becoming part of the Chindits in Burma. Postwar it served as a gunner regiment until 1971 when the title disappeared.
French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
After Britain was drawn into the French Revolutionary Wars, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger proposed in 1794 that the counties should form a force of Volunteer Yeoman Cavalry (Yeomanry) that could be called on by the King to defend the country against invasion or by the Lord Lieutenant to subdue any civil disorder within the county. By the end of the year, 27 counties, mainly in the invasion-threatened South and Midlands of England, had raised Yeomanry. In the spring of 1798 the threat of invasion seemed more acute, and the government encouraged the formation of local armed associations of cavalry and infantry for purely local defence. The first independent Yeomanry Troops now appeared in Cumberland: Eskdale Five Kirks Yeomanry Cavalry, 16 October 1798 Cumberland Yeomanry Cavalry, 25 October 1798 Penrith Yeomanry Cavalry, 15 October 1801
All the Volunteer Cavalry were disbanded after the Treaty of Amiens, but the peace was shortlived, and on the resumption of war a new cavalry troop, the Cumberland Rangers, was raised on about 18 May 1803. The Eskdale Five Kirks and Cumberland Cavalry troops were reformed in 1806.
19th century
After Waterloo the main role for the Yeomanry was to suppress civil disorder (they were paid while on duty). In 1819 (the year of Peterloo) six independent troops of Westmorland Yeomanry Cavalry were raised at his own expense by Colonel the Hon Henry Lowther, MP. These were formed from 22 October 1819 across both Westmorland and Cumberland:
Westmorland
Kendal
Shap
Appleby
Cumberland
Edenhall
Dalemain
Milnthorpe
By 1826 the Westmorland Yeomanry troops had been reduced to just two, and in 1828 the government withdrew funding for the yeomanry. However, in many counties, the Yeomanry continued without pay: the independent troops across Westmorland and Cumberland combined as a single force, the Westmorland and Cumberland Yeomanry (WCY). Pay for duty was restored in 1831 when there was further civil unrest. When Col Lowther retired from the command to become colonel of the Royal Cumberland Militia, Edward Williams Hasell of Dalemain took command of the yeomanry on 30 May 1830 and remained its lieutenant-colonel commandant for 46 years. The Westmorland and Cumberland Yeomanry were called on to suppress chartist riots at Penrith and Carlisle in 1839 and in 1846 to halt fighting between English and Irish labourers working on the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway at Lowther Park, which spilled over into Penrith town centre.
The WCY troops usually assembled for annual training at Kendal, Penrith or Appleby, but when a new troop was raised in Wigton in 1840 Kendal and Appleby were deemed too far away, and thereafter training was concentrated at Penrith. This was usually held at Penrith Racecourse with the men billeted in inns in the town. The WCY troops were formally regimented in 1843.
Following the Cardwell Reforms a mobilisation scheme began to appear in the Army List from December 1875. This assigned Regular Army and Yeomanry units places in an order of battle of corps, divisions and brigades for the 'Active Army', even though these formations were entirely theoretical, with no staff or services assigned. The Westmorland & Cumberland, Lanark, and East Lothian Yeomanry constituted the Cavalry Brigade of VIII Corps based at Musselburgh. This was never more than a paper organisation, but from April 1893 the Army List showed the Yeomanry regiments grouped into brigades for collective training. They were commanded by the senior regimental commanding officer but they did have a Regular Army Brigade major. The Westmorland & Cumberland Yeomanry together with the Duke of Lancaster's Own Yeomanry formed the 14th Yeomanry Brigade. The Yeomanry brigades disappeared from the Army List after the Second Boer War.