The Long Room laid out for the annual St George’s Dinner, the Company’s principal dinner of the year, held every April close to St George’s Day.
An active regiment of the British Territorial Army, now properly known as the Army Reserve, occupies a remarkable patch of hidden green territory close to the City of London. The quaintly named Honourable Artillery Company (HAC) carries a fine array of regimental traditions, layers of history, and several armorial-heraldic distinctions. A complete profile of the HAC would fill a book, but the operational side of the regiment is straightforward. Its Army Reserve troopers are dedicated to the modern military arts of surveillance and target acquisition, using imaging equipment and weapons-locating radar. The sharp end of the HAC is represented by three patrol squadrons of trained reconnaissance soldiers, equipped to operate and survive behind enemy lines if required, and the selection process for the patrols is notably tough.
Attached to this function is a charitable institution, akin to a City livery company, sometimes known as the Company or House. This supports the active units and has its own civilian ceremonial organizations. Together, the active side (the Regiment) and the Company share a fine building, Armoury House, and the stretch of land in front known as the Artillery Garden. All this exists in E1, close to the noisy concrete roundabout at the end of Old Street, just off City Road, and enclosed to the north by Bunhill Fields Burial Grounds. Few who pass are aware of its existence. This is the London Estate, home of the HAC since 1641. Armoury House itself dates from 1735.
The Long Room laid out for the annual St George’s Dinner, the Company’s principal dinner of the year, held every April close to St George’s Day.
The first surprise for visitors to the HAC is sheer expanse of Artillery Garden. Once used for archery practice, it is now a huge sports field overlooked by office buildings on the edge of the City. It has enough space for soccer, rugby and hockey pitches. There is a cricket square close to the spot where one of the oldest cricket pitches was laid in 1725.
The HAC was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1537. Within the infinitely baffling byways of British Army precedence, the HAC can claim to be the oldest regiment in the Army, while at the same time being the second most senior unit of the Territorial Army. It is also the second oldest military organization in the world (after the Vatican’s Pontifical Swiss Guard). The word artillery is now misleading, for although the HAC has operated field guns, and still does for saluting purposes, across the centuries it has encompassed archers, grenadiers and infantry rifle companies. Today its active side includes a detachment of Special Constabulary to the City of London Police.
The Company of Pikemen and Musketeers are a purely ceremonial unit of the HAC, made up of veteran active members, and it serves as the bodyguard of the Lord Mayor of London on ceremonial occasions, primarily at Guildhall and Mansion House. It is armed and uniformed in the style of 1640, and the armoury houses their gleaming equipment, together with the instruments of the Corps of Drums. There is also a ceremonial HAC light cavalry troop, which acts as escort to the Lady Mayoress.
The windows of the Great Stairs.
Armoury House retains many of its eighteenth-century features and is bristling with hardware and history. At the top of its Great Stairs, which are illuminated by a stained glass window, there is a battered stone pillar, known as a rover. This is an ancient archery target mark, reputed to be the only surviving example anywhere. It was removed in 1881 from a wall near a bridge over the Regent’s Canal nearby. A ship’s bell from the vessel that carried the 1st Battalion HAC to France in 1914 is preserved here. The panelled Long Room is lined with portraits of former captain generals and colonel commandants. In the Court Room sits the Court of Assistants, the board of governors for the HAC, who share the room with a rare example of sixteenth-century jousting amour.
The armoury.
Adjoining Armoury House is Finsbury Barracks. The two buildings are linked by a modern extension faced in striped stone and granite dating from 1994. Owned by the HAC, Finsbury Barracks is now administered by the Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Association. It was built in 1857 as the headquarters of the Royal London Militia, and from 1907 was the base of the Auxiliary Forces of the City of London. It dates from an age when the role of reservists and territorials was being developed, and drill halls were being built all across Britain. Finsbury Barracks remains a functional operational building leased back to the Army, and one of the memorable features of the HAC is seeing where pageantry ends and function begins.
