defence artillery, from the early days of the Artillery Volunteers Captain George Darby of the 3rd Sussex AVC, a former MP for Sussex, had promoted the idea of the Volunteers manning semi-mobile 'position batteries' of smooth-bore field guns pulled by agricultural horses. This concept was put into practice by a number of AVCs, but the War Office refused to pay for the upkeep of field guns and they had died out among the AVCs in the 1870s. In 1888 the concept was revived and some Volunteer batteries were reorganised as position artillery to work alongside the Volunteer infantry brigades. In 1892 the 1st Sussex was reorganised as follows: No 1 Position Battery at Brighton Nos 2–6 Garrison Companies at Brighton No 7 Garrison Company at Lewes No 8 Garrison Company at High Street, Shoreham In 1899 the Artillery volunteers were transferred to the Royal Garrison Artillery (RGA), the Sussex units becoming the 1st Sussex RGA (V) at Brighton and 2nd Sussex RGA (V) at Eastbourne respectively, with the 2nd Sussex designated as position or 'heavy' artillery. Railway gun Charles Gervaise Boxall (1852–1914), a Brighton-born London solicitor, was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 1st Sussex in 1873 and rose to become its commanding officer (CO) in 1893. In 1884 he published The Armoured Train for Coast Defence in Great Britain, outlining a new way to employ heavy artillery. No 6 Garrison Company of the 1st Sussex AVC was formed entirely from railway workers, and in 1894 they manned an Armoured train constructed in the workshops of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (of which the unit's Honorary Colonel, Sir Julian Goldsmid, was a director). Boxall was an enthusiastic member of the Volunteer Movement, and was awarded the Volunteer Decoration (VD) in 1894 and made a Companion of the Bath (CB) in 1897. He succeeded Goldsmid as Honorary Colonel in 1896. When the Second Boer War broke out, he suggested the creation of a combat unit drawn from the London volunteer units. This became the City of London Imperial Volunteers (CIV) to which he acted as secretary and depot commandant. Boxall was knighted (KCB) for his services during the war, and in 1906–7 he served on the committee that recommended the creation of the Territorial Force. Territorial Force When the Volunteers were subsumed into the new Territorial Force (TF) under the Haldane Reforms of 1908, the bulk of the