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HistoryIt began life as the main royal and national arsenal housed in the Tower of London. Indeed the Royal Armouries has occupied buildings within the Tower for making and storing arms, armour and military equipment for as long as the Tower itself has been in existence. Although distinguished foreign visitors had been allowed to visit the Tower to inspect the Royal Armouries from the 15th century at least, at first they did so in the way a visiting statesman today might be taken to a military base in order to impress him with the power of the country. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth I less exalted foreign and domestic visitors were allowed to view the collections, which then consisted almost entirely of relatively recent arms and armour from the arsenal of King Henry VIII. To make room for the modern equipment required by a great Renaissance monarch Henry had cleared the Tower stores of the collections of his medieval predecessors. The Tower and its Armouries were not regularly opened to the paying public until King Charles II returned from exile in 1660. Visitors then came to see not only the Crown Jewels but also the 'Line of Kings', an exhibition of some of the grander armours, mounted on horses made by such sculptors as Grinling Gibbons, and representing the 'good' Kings of England, and the 'Spanish Armoury', containing weapons and instruments of torture said to have been taken from the 'Invincible Armada' of 1588. The Royal Armouries had become, in effect, what it has remained ever since, the national museum of arms and armour. During the great age of Empire-building which followed, the collections grew steadily. Until its abolition in 1855, the Board of Ordnance, with its headquarters in the Tower, designed and tested prototypes, and organised the production of huge quantities of regulation arms of many sorts for the British armed forces. Considerable quantities of this material remain in the collections today, and some can be seen on the walls of the Hall of Steel. Also, throughout this period trophy weapons of all sorts continued to be sent to the Tower and displayed as proof of Britain's continuing military successes. Early in the 19th century the nature and purpose of the museum began to change radically. Displays were gradually altered from exhibitions of curiosities to historically 'accurate' and logically organised displays designed to improve the visitor by illuminating the past. As part of this change items began to be added to the collection in new ways, by gift and purchase, and this increased rate of acquisition has continued to this day. In this way the collection has developed enormously, the 'old Tower' material being joined in the last 150 years by the world-wide material which now makes the Royal Armouries one of the greatest collections of its type in the world. As the museum's collections continued to expand the Tower became too small to house it all properly. In 1988 the Royal Armouries took a lease on Fort Nelson, a large 19th-century artillery fort near Portsmouth. This is now open to the public and displays the collection of artillery. In 1990, after two years of preliminary research and deliberation, the decision was taken to establish a new Royal Armouries in the north of England in which to house the bulk of the collection of world-wide arms and armour, thus allowing the Royal Armouries in the Tower to concentrate upon the display and interpretation of those parts of the collection which directly relate to the Tower of London. The concept of the Royal Armouries in Leeds had been born. The new museum has been developed specifically to show the collections of the Royal Armouries in the best possible way. We began with the question 'How do we want to display our collections?', and the answer to that has dictated the sort of building which has been designed and built. The Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds has been built for the 21st century using the best of traditional museum design and it has been developed quite consciously to show its collections in relation to the real world in which we live. The displays seek to make the historical stories relevant by bringing them up to the present day. The building has, quite literally, been designed around the collections of the museum. The displays are intended to entertain and stimulate a desire to learn, and our intention has been to create a multi-layered experience to cater for the many different interests and interest levels of our visitors. The use of violence by humankind for supremacy or survival, or its sublimation into sport or play always has been, and probably always will be, one of the main forces for historical change. This is the underlying theme of the new Royal Armouries. It is a fascinating and often disturbing story of great importance to us and our children. |
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