The West Riding Artillery's lineage is continued in a battery of today's Army Reserve In 1859, as the United Kingdom feared invasion from the continent, the government reluctantly accepted the creation of many Rifle, Artillery and Engineer Volunteer Corps composed of part-time soldiers eager to supplement the Regular British Army in time of need.

[1][2] The Secretary of State for War allowed the Artillery Volunteer Corps (AVCs) free access to guns and ammunition for practice.

[3] Most of the AVCs were formed in the coastal counties to man fixed coast defence guns but the following corps were raised in the inland West Riding of Yorkshire:[4][5][6] The 1st Administrative Brigade of Yorkshire (West Riding) Artillery Volunteers was formed at Bradford on 21 March 1864 and eventually included the 2nd, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th AVCs.

[8] In 1868 the 5th West Riding AVC won the Queen's Prize at the annual National Artillery Association competition held at Shoeburyness.

By 1894 all three West Riding units had been classified as position artillery, each organised in four batteries and equipped with 40 pounder rifled breechloading guns.

Lieutenant-Colonel Allen of the 4th West Riding RGA (V) was one of five Volunteer officers invited to sit on a committee under Lord Raglan to consider the difficulties of the new efficiency regulations.

His Territorial and Reserve Forces Act 1907 brought together the Volunteer and Yeomanry units to form the Territorial Force (TF), with the same home defence role as before, but, in addition, giving them the capability of acting as backup to the Regular Army if the need arose, with a full organisation of infantry divisions and mounted brigades, with supporting arms.

In addition, the Act set up County Associations to help co-ordinate the work of the War Office and the new TF, and to recruit, house and administer the units.

With the change to the smaller guns, steam tractors were no longer required and the drill halls had to be adapted to accommodate horses.

During 1915 the BEF began forming ad hoc trench mortar batteries (TMBs) manned by a mixture of infantry and RFA gunners.

In February 1918 the mortars were reorganised into larger batteries: Z MTMB in each division was split between X and Y and the HTMBs became corps-level units, with W/49 joining X Corps.

[23][40] 62nd (2nd West Riding) Divisional Artillery was organised as follows:[38][39] After a long period of training hampered by lack of equipment, 62nd (2nd WR) Division served on the Western Front from January 1917.

In 1921 the TF was reorganised as the Territorial Army (TA) and the units were redesignated:[7][9][11][13][24][31][37][45] The brigades once again provided the divisional artillery for 49th (WR) Division, which had also reformed in 1920.

In 1924 the RFA and RGA were subsumed into the Royal Artillery (RA), and the word 'Field' was inserted into the titles of its brigades and batteries.

When the British Expeditionary Force had to withdraw, the 70th returned to the United Kingdom via Cherbourg with all their guns, vehicles and equipment intact.

Both units were equipped with the 25 pounder self propelled gun (the Sexton), and both became part of 49th (West Riding) Armoured Division.

[8][24] To mark the centenary of the formation of the 1st Yorkshire (West Riding) Artillery Volunteer Corps, the Freedom of the City of Leeds was granted to the 269th on 3 February 1960.