3-082-584 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Volunteer Manoeuvres at Brighton: March Past - Mounted Rifles, 1895. 'The Easter military manoeuvres of the Metropolitan and Home District Volunteers...At Brighton field manoeuvres were performed; or rather on the hills, Stanmer Down and Palmer Down, and towards Ditchling Beacon, with the strategic idea that an enemy had landed at Newhaven and occupied Lewes. There had been rather stiff marching in Sussex, from Hayward's Heath, on the Friday and Saturday... The battle of Plumpton Plain, between Brighton and Lewes, was a very pretty spectacle. Colonel Prewitt, 1st Queen's Royal West Surrey Regiment, commanded four battalions of red-coated Volunteers, with the 2nd Sussex Artillery, on the heights above Palmer, moving to attack Brighton. He was opposed by Lord Belhaven, with six Surrey Volunteer battalions, detachments of Middlesex Yeomanry Cavalry, and the 1st Sussex Artillery Volunteers. These, after a vigorous conflict, were compelled to retire towards Brighton. The whole of both forces, marching thence five miles, were reviewed on Brighton racecourse'. From "Illustrated London News", 1895.