The Regiment

Men born in Staffordshire were soldiers long before a regiment was raised there in the reign of Queen Anne. The Staffordshire Regiment traces its roots to the formation of a Regiment of Foot at Lichfield in 1705 and is unique amongst all of Britain’s infantry regiments in its continuous identity with a single County. A direct link with Staffordshire was established in 1782, when the 38th Foot received the additional title of 1st Staffordshire Regiment and the 64th Foot of 2nd Staffordshire Regiment.

The South Staffordshire and North Staffordshire Regiments were created out of four of the old numbered regiments, which for the South included the 80th Staffordshire Volunteers, in 1881. From that period too, the old County militias and volunteers were linked directly with their Regular Army counterparts. These links were regularised further by the formation of the Territorial Force in 1908, by which year both South and North Staffords each had six battalions: two Regular, two Militia and two Territorial.