Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The Great War C.M.G. group of five awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel The Earl Cairns, The Rifle Brigade and 5th London Regiment, commanding the London Rifle Brigade in France 1914

The Order of St. Michael and St. George, C.M.G., neck badge, silver-gilt and enamels; Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 3 clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, South Africa 1902 (Major Hon. W. D. Cairns, Rifle Brigade); 1914 Star, with copy clasp (Lt. Col. Earl Cairns, 5/Lond. R.); British War and Victory Medals, with M.I.D. oak leaf (Lt. Col. Earl Cairns) together with a small resin disc inlaid with silver crest of the London Rifle Brigade, good very fine (6) £600-800

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Medals to The Rifle Brigade and Affiliated Regiments from the collection formed by Michael Haines.

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The Honourable Wilfred Dallas Cairns was born on 28 November 1865, the fourth son of the 1st Earl Cairns, Lord Chancellor of England. He was educated at Wellington College and R.M.C. Sandhurst, being gazetted Lieutenant in the Rifle Brigade on 13 May 1885. He was promoted to Captain in May 1894, and retired on 10 April 1895, being gazetted the same day as Captain in the 5th (Militia) Battalion, in which he was promoted Major on 9 February 1898. He served with the Battalion in South Africa and resigned with the honorary rank of Lieutenant-Colonel on 24 May 1905. In that year he succeeded his elder brother as 4th Earl Cairns, Viscount Garmoyle and Baron Cairns of Garmoyle in the County of Antrim, all in the Peerage of the United Kingdom.

On 9 December 1912, Earl Cairns was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel Commandant of the London Rifle Brigade, the 1st Battalion of which he took to France. Embarked on board the S.S. Chyebassa on the 4th November 1914, the regiment arrived in France the following day. Until the 1960’s veterans of the London Rifle Brigade held a Chyebassa dinner, latterly a luncheon, on the anniversary of the crossing. Later that month the regiment was fighting in the trenches, one of the few territorial regiments to gain the clasp to the 1914 Star. The famous fraternisation between the British and German troops on Christmas Day 1914 took place in the London Rifle Brigade sector. Earl Cairns, now in his fiftieth year, was invalided home in March 1915 and resigned his commission on 23 April 1916, on account of ill health. The arthritis from which he suffered was to afflict him for the rest of his life. For his services in the Great War he was mentioned in despatches and created a Comapnion of St Michael and St George. Earl Cairns became a Deputy Lieutenant for Somerset in 1924, and died at his home, Farleigh House, near Bath, on 24 October 1946.