Army Pipers' Uniform RRS

[OC Richard]

In 2006 the various regiments of infantry in Scotland (both regular and reserve) became battalions of a new uber-Regiment, the Royal Regiment Of Scotland.

This continued a process, began in 1881, of amalgamating old regiments into fewer new ones, old traditional uniforms lost at each stage, the process culminating in 2006. At that time the entirety of the Scottish infantry were put into a single generic kit, all battalions to now wear the same tartan, sporran, cap badge, collar badges, etc.

One would have thought that the pipers of the various battalions would have likewise been put into a regiment-wide generic kit. It would have been logical for the pipers to wear the Royal Stewart tartan, because 1) it's a Royal regiment and 2) more of the antecedent regiments' pipers wore Royal Stewart than any other single tartan.

The Pipes & Drums of any of the battlions, performing with the Military Band, would have looked more or less like this:





That is, wearing the same footwear, sporrans, doublets, etc as the rest of the Regiment but wearing the Royal Stewart tartan and of course the plain Glengarries.

This is what apparently happened with Pipes & Drums of 7SCOTS the 51st Highland (pictured above).

The Pipes & Drums of the first, second, third, and fourth battalions managed to retain the traditional uniform of their antecedent regiments, with all the wonderful traditional elements such as the squared spats of the Black Watch (now 3SCOTS) and the Red Erskine kilts and plaids of the pipers of the Royal Highland Fusiliers (now 2SCOTS).

The traditional distinctive pipers' dress is best seen in Full Dress.

Here is 1SCOTS, the Royal Scots Borderers, formed in 2006 from The Royal Scots and The Kings Own Scottish Borderers:





The pipers wear Royal Stewart kilts and plaids while the drummers and Drum Major wear Hunting Stewart trews.

Here is 2SCOTS, the Royal Highland Fusiliers. Here you can see the piper in antecedent dress while the other soldiers are in the generic Royal Regiment Of Scotland kit. The most distinctive element is the Red Erskine kilt, plaid, bagcover, and drone ribbons.



Note also the RRS spats have black buttons, the spats which are part of antecedent dress have white buttons.



Here are the Pipes & Drums of 3SCOTS, the Black Watch. Some of the distinctions are the Red Hackle, the square-toe spats, the pipers in Royal Stewart kilts and plaids, the pipes dressed in Black Watch bag-covers and drone ribbons in both tartans.
Their pipers are unusual for Scottish battalions in that they wear the Feather Bonnet.



And here the Pipes & Drums of 4SCOTS, The Highlanders.

A quite different appearance due to the Cameron of Erracht kilts and plaids. Tartans of various antecedent regiments dress the pipes.