Formative Dates
1855
Formation of Military Mounted Police
1877
Corps of Military Mounted Police Gazetted
1950
Re-Formation of Corps of Royal Military Police Mounted Troop UK
1995
Disbandment of Corps of Royal Military Police Mounted Troop
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Policing a camp built for 30,000 Soldiers
Aldershot in the 1850s was a new and enormous military settlement, and its garrison commanders needed a body of men able to cover ground quickly — hence “mounted” police rather than foot patrols. The original instruction of 1855 set the Corps’ task in plain terms: preserve good order in camp and protect the surrounding civilian population. Duties included patrolling the lines, apprehending deserters and offenders, and controlling the movement of troops and transport around the cantonment.
As the Corps grew after 1877, mounted policemen took on escort duties, attended the Army’s annual manoeuvres, and were posted to other garrison towns including Woolwich, Shorncliffe and Portsmouth, in addition to Aldershot.
Overseas service
The Military Mounted Police deployed on active service alongside the Army it policed: in Egypt and Sudan in the 1880s (Tel-el-Kebir, Suakin, the Nile Expeditionary Force), and in South Africa during the Second Boer War. In the First World War, mounted and foot policemen together handled traffic control, the recovery of stragglers, prisoner-of-war custody and the protection of civilians across every major theatre — work recognised after Neuve Chapelle (1915) as essential to keeping an army moving under modern conditions.
After the Troop was reformed in 1950, it also went on to serve outside Aldershot and other mainland Garrisons. For a short period, it served on OP Banner in N. Ireland, and also in Germany with the British Army of the Rhine.
From working patrol to living tradition
When the Mounted Troop was re-formed at Aldershot in 1950, mechanisation had already made most day-to-day Army policing a job for vehicles rather than horses. The revived unit still carried out patrol and policing duties in places unsuited to cars — stable lines, parade grounds, training areas — but its stated second purpose, preserving mounted RMP tradition, became the dominant one as the decades went on.
In practice this meant the Mounted Troop increasingly functioned as a ceremonial unit: turning out in full dress for parades, escorts and regimental occasions, and keeping alive drill, horsemanship and turnout skills that had once been operational necessities and were now a link to the Corps’ Victorian origins.