The 3rd Lancashire Artillery Volunteers was a unit of Britain's part-time Volunteer Force recruited from Blackburn and the surrounding area in 1860. It became a brigade of the Royal Field Artillery in the Territorial Force in 1908, and served through the First World War with the 42nd Division at Gallipoli, in Egypt and on the Western Front. Its second line unit also served on the Western Front in 1917–18. During the Second World War, its batteries operated in the light anti-aircraft role in Norway, France, Greece, Crete, North Africa and Italy. It was reformed postwar, but disappeared in a merger in 1955.

The Bolton Artillery, under various titles, has been a Volunteer unit of the British Army based in Bolton, Lancashire, since 1889. In the First World War it served in Egypt and Gallipoli in 1915–17, and then on the Western Front for the rest of the war, including Passchendaele, the German Spring Offensive and the Allied Hundred Days Offensive. Just before the outbreak of the Second World War the regiment formed a duplicate unit. The parent regiment served in the Battle of France and was evacuated from Dunkirk. Both regiments served at the Battle of Alamein and in the Italian campaign, while one of the regiments was involved in the intervention in Yugoslavia. The regiment was reformed postwar, and after a number of mergers its successors continue to serve in today's Army Reserve.