4th Battalion, Royal Artillery 1775-83

29/07/2026

12/07/2026

Just finished two more blocks for our artillery cartridge boxes. Made from beech with 9 holes for a .69 caliber paper cartridge. The centre hole is for the priming wire used to pearce a hole into the charge loaded in the atrilery piece. The two holes in the ends are for the iron nails used to spike the guns if theres risk of them being captured. Next stage is to nail these in place in the leather bags.

27/06/2026

Nice to see a portfire being used to fire the guns. Portfires are still used in the UK but for lighting fireworks.

25/06/2026

More images from Moira Furnace Museum and Country Park. Thanks to Samantha Emery for the pictures.

21/06/2026

More images from the Moira Furnace event.

15/06/2026

Some images from an event at Moira Furnace, Leicestershire. Site of a blast furnace built in 1804. Built by Francis Rawdon- Hastings who was a British officer in the American war of Independence. Most of the UK AWI groups were there and some visiting reenactors from Germany. It was the first event for gunner Thorpe who had his new kit delivered the day before and was still being fitted over the weekend. We did have a chance to fire a few rounds too. Images to follow. A great weekend was had.

11/06/2026

We'll be here with our 3Pr and mortar display this weekend.

11/06/2026

We're slowly kitting up our gunners and here's a coat made by James Graves Historical Uniforms in the UK. More to come soon.

06/06/2026

Another item added to my artilley display, a Carcass round for a 4 1/2" mortar. A carcass round is an incendiary round and this is the internal iron frame. It would have a sewn canvas bag around it and then filled with a mix of Swedish tar, tallow, corned black powder and salt petre. Also holes where formed with woodern formers to make tubes in the tar for fuses. When complete the whole thing would be coated in Kitting. This was a mix of rosin, pitch beeswax and tallow. When fired the fuses would ignite by means of the flame produced from the charge propelling it. The whole thing once ignited needs to be out of the barrel as soon as possible or you'll end up with moltern tar coating the inside of the barrel. So mortars and howitzers are well suited for the job. They were called carcass rounds because of the iron bars that looked like ribs when they come in longer oblong forms like this one. They also came in cast iron hollow round shot with four holes for the fuses.
Ten and eight inch carcasses were fitted with brass tubes called pistol tubes. They were 4.6 inches long by .75 inches wide. These would have a blackpowder charge in them with 2 musket balls.
I you want to know more then the book "British artilley ammunition 1780 by Adrin B. Caruana. Thats what im steadily working through try to work out how these things work.

07/05/2026

It was our first event out with the artillery display on bank holiday Monday. We were at Leicester Guildhall helping celebrate their 100 years of being open to the public. First we had to move the 3pdr in bits through the building to set up in a small courtyard in the centre of the Guildhall. A tricky task trying not to scrape the door frames. It was a busy day with lots of interest. A great event and always good to support local historical sites.