A Beginner’s Guide to Differentiating Mid 18th Century British Army Uniforms
I covered this briefly in an ask a few weeks ago, but it made me realise that I should probably do a post covering the basics of how British infantry regiments were differentiated from the mid 18th century through to the early-mid 19th century. While this won’t offer you a comprehensive list of which regiment wore what, it’ll start you down the path to understanding the terminology and styles involved. Speaking of terminology, let’s start with the basics. We’re going to be talking a lot about “facings” and “lace.” In the context of 18th century uniforms, facings are generally what we’d today call the cuffs, breast turnbacks and collar of a uniform coat, while the lace is the stiffer fabric banding around buttons. The basic American Revolutionary War era British uniform below exemplifies these;
In this case the dark blue bits are the facings and the white bars decorating them (around the buttons) constitutes the lace.
These were the basic elements that varied from one infantry regiment to the next. First off, the facing colour provided a point of difference. The most common colours in the British Army were blue and yellow, but there were all sorts of other funky facings out there, so while the 10th, 13th and 57th Foot sported yellow (albeit often of different shades) and the 4th, 8th and 75th bore blue (generally a dark blue was always used. Blue was also considered the most prestigious colour, and was granted to “royal” regiments which had distinguished themselves), the 66th had lime green, the 50th black, the 17th white, the 86th orange and the 56th purple (though it changed to blue before the Revolutionary War).
The second means of regimental identification involved the lace framing the buttons. This could be arranged in different styles, and be woven from different-coloured thread. Below is a handy picture comparing the lace of 20 different British regiments, helpfully set against said regiment’s facing colour. As you can see, each bares a unique combination of thread colours and patterns.
The spacing of the lace/buttons also helped create difference. This was most famously the case with the Brigade of Guards, who still differentiate based on the spacing of their buttons today. Buttons evenly spaced were the 1st Guards (now the Grenadier Guards), groups in twos made them the 2nd (Coldstream) Guards, in threes the 3rd (Scots) Guards, fours the Irish Guard and fives the Welsh Guards. In the 18th century the style of lace also differed between the 1st Guards and the other two (the Irish and Welsh Guards weren’t founded until the early 20th century). So below we see two guardsmen in 1775. Their buttons and lace are grouped in twos, and the lace has pointed ends, making them the 2nd (Coldstream) regiment.
Compare this with the guardsman below. His lacing is evently spaced, with broader points (called “bastion ended”) and hollow insides. This marks him out as a member of the 1st Guards.
For ease of comparison, here are two guardsmen of the 2nd Guards and one of the 1st;
As mentioned, the button spacing continues to feature today. The guardsmen below have their buttons set in groups of three, so they’re the Scots Guards;
While the spacing of lace/buttons is most famously used to differentiated within the Brigade of Guards, it was also used by line regiments in the 18th century.
So, let’s see all that in action in one place, shall we? Below is a picture of three Revolutionary War era British infantrymen.
You can see there are obviously two separate regiments due to the yellow and blue facings, but the button spacing actually indicates three - the two in yellow have different sets, the one on the left has his buttons/lace evenly spaced, the one in the middle has them in twos. I suspect the one in the middle is the 37th Foot going on the red on the outer edges of his lace, and the one on the left is in the 6th or 16th, though it’s difficult to tell without a close-up of the lace weave.
Which brings us onto a rather obvious point - if regiments in the 18th century British Army are told apart through a rather long list of differentiation between facing colour, lace weave and colour and button spacings, isn’t identifying them at a glance pretty difficult. Well, yes, but a couple of factors would’ve made things easier. Firstly, there was hardly ever a time in the 18th century when a British Army in the field consisted of more than a dozen regiments. Being on active service with a smaller force would quickly have gotten you accustomed to the small differences.
Also, prior to the Revolutionary War, the British Army instituted regimental numbers on buttons and belt locks, so you could just look at those…
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