Behind-the-scenes tours of Royal Artillery Museum

Friday, 1 September 2023 01:00

The Royal Artillery Museum has announced it's taking part in Heritage Open Days this year.

From the 14th to 17th September 2023, they'll be opening their stores at Wood Road through a limited number of pre-booked tours as part of this fantastic England-wide event.

Visitors can view some of the historic collections and learn about the unique history of the building that houses it.

Heritage Open Days is England’s largest grassroots heritage festival, involving over 40,000 volunteers and 5,000 events. Each year, places across the country throw open their doors and allow people to see hidden places and try new experiences for free.

Visitors to the stores at Wood Road will have the opportunity to see some unique and fascinating items from the museum's historical collection, including artefacts from the small objects store, as well as twenty of the finest historic field guns in the country, dating from the seventeenth century to the start of the Second World War.

This part of the collection is currently housed in the oldest surviving aircraft hangars in Europe, allowing those attending to go behind the scenes in the stores, explore historic field guns and find out about the birthplace of British military aviation.

The Wood Road hangars are Listed Grade 2* and were built in 1910. That year, pilots flying from these sheds took part in a major military exercise that finally convinced the Army there might be a use for aircraft in war.

Larkhill became Britain's first military airfield but was only operational until 1914, and the sheds are now almost all that remains of this key moment in aviation history.

Until last year, the sheds stored surplus furniture for the nearby Army camp but have now been made available by the Royal Artillery Museum, providing office, workshop and storage space.

The Royal Artillery Museum’s collection was established in 1778 for training purposes and is one of the oldest and most significant of all military collections.

It opened to the public in 1820 at the Rotunda on Woolwich Common, moving to the nearby Firepower museum in 2001.

Firepower closed in 2016, pending the creation of a new museum near Larkhill, the modern home of the Royal Artillery.

That project is ongoing - for now, most of the collection remains in various storage locations and is not generally accessible to the public.

Limited places are available on Thursday, 14th, Friday, 15th, Saturday, 16th and Sunday, 17th September; booking is essential.

You can book your place using the following link: https://bit.ly/RAMopendays by emailing info@royalartillerymuseum.com or by calling 01980 653333.