Under General Order 72 of 4 April 1882 the Royal Artillery (RA) broke up its existing administrative brigades[a] of garrison artillery (7th–11th Brigades, RA) and assigned the individual batteries to 11 new territorial divisions.

These divisions were purely administrative and recruiting organisations, not field formations.

For these units the divisions represented recruiting districts – batteries could be serving anywhere in the British Empire and their only connection to brigade headquarters (HQ) was for the supply of drafts and recruits.

The artillery militia units (sometimes referred to as regiments) already comprised a number of batteries, and were redesignated as brigades, losing their county titles in the process.

The regular batteries were distributed across most of the divisions and completely renumbered.