Friday, September 26, 2008

Firepower Artillery Museum

A few weeks ago I went to the Firepower artillery museum at Woolwich Arsenal. I've been meaning to write about it for a while, so it's about time I got down to it.

Basically it's good, very good.

There's actually two museums in two different buildings opposite each other, so if you do go do make sure that you do both.

If I had to make a complaint about it I would say that some of the layout can be a bit disorganised. You can have seemingly unrelated items popped into the same display case next to each other, which can make it a bit confusing. However that's really only a minor niggle, and in a way it's quite endearing.

It's more of a museum of artillery, as the name suggests, than a museum about the Royal Arsenal. Though it does have a lot of artefacts and information about that aspect of it all.

All told a very interesting day out.

The Arsenal used to have narrow gauge railways criss-crossing it. I believe that this is a surviving wagon from one of them. I think it used to be over the river at North Woolwich but was moved over fairly recently.
A piece of the Iraqi Supergun and a gun shield that was shot at in order to test it's strength.
"Yes son you can have a cannon, but it's got to look like a cute animal!"
The main hall, lots of things!

They've also got the cannons captured during the Crimean War from was taken the metal that all Victoria Cross medals have been cast from. Unfortunately the photo upload now seems to have died, so I can't get anymore photos up...

1 comment:

edorourke said...

Wow, that looks way better then I thought. I'll pop down in the next few weeks I reckon.