Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry Great War cap badge

['Ticker' Riley]

In my attempts to get hold of a genuine First World War D.C.L.I. ordinary ranks’ cap badge I recently bought one with the infamous J.R.GAUNT.LONDON mark associated with 1970s restrikes, which I subsequently returned to the seller after the overwhelming weight of opinion here was that it was indeed a restrike. Since then I have now managed to get hold of this example by Lambourne’s of Birmingham:

The badge has been through the wars a little (if you’ll excuse the military pun!), and whilst the dealer who sold me the badge didn’t say it dated from the Great War, it was one of the oldest badges he had. Interestingly I have seen previous postings elsewhere on the Forum about Lambourne cap badges, and in particular there is one by Sonofacqms in which he said:

Originally Posted by Sonofacqms

Several years ago I got interested in badges made by Lambourne, the company I believe only made badges during WW1 and the quality of their strikes varied between reasonable and awful, they were not plentiful and I only managed to acquire: Lancs Fusiliers, Norfolk Regt, A.S.C., Northamptonshire Regt, KRR, and the Cambridgeshire Regt. All these badges were die-struck to a degree of quality.

As I’m still so new to this game I’m very much on the learning curve with things, so any advice or comments regarding this badge would be very much appreciated. At the moment I think this one is an authentic Lambourne badge, and it does look very much like one that was formerly posted up by Jibba Jabba; thought the slider on his was shorter and squared off. Anyway here’s a close up of the slder on the one I’ve bought:

If Sonofacqms is right about Lambourne only making badges during the First War, then I think there’s a good chance I have one from the period I’m looking for. Though having said that, I have also been led to believe that ordinary ranks’ badges never carried a maker’s mark - all comments welcome!

Regards

Martin