Imperial War Museum

Imperial War Museums
Surrey
Imperial War Museum London
Type:	Military museum
Location
Town:	Southwark
Address:	Lambeth Road
History
	Military museum
Information
Website:	iwm.org.uk

The Imperial War Museum is a national museum, the main branch of which is in Southwark in Surrey, with four further branches.

The museum today, as 'Imperial War Museums' consists of:

• Imperial War Museum London
• Imperial War Museum Duxford
• HMS Belfast (which became a branch of the museum in 1978)
• The Cabinet War Rooms (or 'Churchill War Rooms'), opened in 1984
• Imperial War Museum North

Founded in 1917, the Imperial War Museum was intended to record the civil and military war effort and sacrifice of the United Kingdom and its Empire during the First World War. The museum's remit has since expanded to include all conflicts in which British or Commonwealth forces have been involved since 1914.

The museum opened to the public in 1920, originally housed in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham Hill. In 1924 the museum moved to space in the Imperial Institute in South Kensington and in 1936 it acquired a permanent home at the former Bethlem Royal Hospital in Southwark, where it remains, and which serves as its headquarters.

The outbreak of the Second World War saw the museum expand both its collections and its terms of reference, but in the post-war period it entered a period of decline. In 1976 the museum opened IWM Duxford at Duxford airfield in Cambridgeshire, and in 1978 the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Belfast, which is permanently berthed on the River Thames in central London, became a branch of the museum. In 1984, Churchill War Rooms, an underground wartime command centre in Westminster, were opened to the public. In 2002 IWM North opened in Trafford, Lancashire.

From the 1980s onwards, the museum's Southwark building underwent a series of multimillion-pound redevelopments, the latest of which was completed in 2022.

The museum's collections include archives of personal and official documents, photographs, film and video material, and oral history recordings, an extensive library, a large art collection, and examples of military vehicles and aircraft, equipment, and other artefacts.

The museum is funded by government grants, charitable donations, and revenue generation through commercial activity such as retailing, licensing, and publishing. General admission is free to IWM London (although specific exhibitions require the purchase of a ticket) and IWM North, but an admission fee is levied at the other branches.

History of the museum

Establishment: 1917–1921

On 27 February 1917 Sir Alfred Mond MP, First Commissioner of WorksOn 27 February 1917 Sir Alfred Mond MP proposed the establishment of a National War Museum, which was accepted by the War Cabinet and the decision announced in The Times on 26 March that year. Sir Alfred chaired a committee to oversee the collection of material to illustrate Britain's war effort, examining such subjects as the Army, the Navy, the production of munitions, and women's war work. There was an early appreciation of the need for exhibits to reflect personal experience in order to prevent the collections becoming dead relics. Sir Martin Conway, the museum's first director general, said that exhibits must "be vitalised by contributions expressive of the action, the experiences, the valour and the endurance of individuals".

The museum's first curator and secretary was Charles ffoulkes, who had previously been curator of the Royal Armouries at the Tower of London. In July 1917 Sir Alfred made a visit to the Western Front in order to study how best to organise the museum's growing collection, and met Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front, who reportedly took great interest in his work. In December 1917 the name was changed to the Imperial War Museum after a resolution from the India and Dominions Committee of the museum.

The museum was opened by King George V at the Crystal Palace on 9 June 1920. To reflect the museum's Imperial remit the board included appointees of the governments of India, South Africa, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Relocation 1924–1936

The Imperial Institute, South Kensington

In 1924 the museum moved to the Imperial Institute building (demolished in the 1950s and 1960s to make way for Imperial College) in South Kensington. While this location was more central and in a prestigious area for museums, the accommodation itself proved cramped and inadequate and in 1936 a new permanent location was found south of the River Thames in Southwark. The building, designed by James Lewis was the former Bethlem Royal Hospital which had been vacated following the hospital's relocation to Beckenham in Kent. The site was owned by Lord Rothermere, who had originally intended to demolish the building to provide a public park in what was a severely overcrowded area of London. Eventually the central portion of the hospital building was retained.

Sir Martin Conway described the building as "...a fine building, really quite noble building, with a great portico, a distinguishing dome, and two great wings added to it for the accommodation of lunatics no longer required. This particular building can be made to contain our collection admirably, and we shall preserve from destruction quite a fine building which otherwise will disappear". The "distinguishing dome" was added by Sydney Smirke in 1846 and housed the hospital's chapel. The museum was reopened by the Duke of York (later King George VI) in its new accommodation on 7 July 1936.

Second World War and after: 1939–1966

With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the museum began to collect material documenting the conflict. In November 1939, during the "Phoney War", the museum appeared in the opening sequence of the GPO Film Unit production The First Days, in which children are seen playing on some of the museum's German artillery pieces captured during the First World War. With the Dunkirk evacuation in May–June 1940, the British Army's shortage of equipment saw eighteen of the museum's artillery pieces return to military service. The museum's trench clubs were used by the Home Guard, while other items such as sights and optical instruments were returned to the Ministry of Supply. The museum refused to return some historic items such as a naval gun from HMS Lance (which had fired Britain's first shot of the First World War) or a gun served by Victoria Cross-winning boy seaman Jack Cornwell. The museum was closed for the duration of the war in September 1940 with the onset of the Blitz. On 31 January 1941 the museum was struck by a Luftwaffe bomb which fell on the naval gallery. A number of ship models were damaged by the blast and a Short Type 184 seaplane, which had flown at the Battle of Jutland, was destroyed. While closed to the public the museum's building was used for a variety of purposes connected to the war effort, such as a repair garage for government motor vehicles, a centre for Air Raid Precautions civil defence lectures and a fire fighting training school.

In October 1945 the museum mounted a temporary exhibition, the first since the end of the war in August, which showcased technologies developed by the Petroleum Warfare Department. These included the submarine fuel pipeline PLUTO, the fog dispersal method FIDO, and flame weapons such as the Churchill Crocodile and Wasp Universal Carrier. Due to bomb damage to the building and exhibits, the museum was obliged to reopen its galleries piecemeal and opened a portion of its galleries in November 1946. A third of the galleries were opened in 1948 and a further wing opened in 1949.

In 1953, with Commonwealth forces engaged in Korea and Malaya, the museum began its current policy of collecting material from all modern conflicts in which British or Commonwealth forces were involved. Despite this expansion of remit, the early postwar period was a period of decline for the museum. Noble Frankland, the museum's director from 1960 to 1982, described the museum's galleries in 1955 as appearing "dingy and neglected [and in a] dismal state of decay" the museum's "numerous stunning exhibits" notwithstanding.

Redevelopment and expansion: 1966–2012

15-inch guns outside the museum, from the Ramillies and the Resolution

In 1966 the museum's Southwark building was extended to provide collections storage and other facilities, the first major expansion since the museum had moved to the site. The development also included a purpose-built cinema. In 1967 the museum acquired a pair of 15-inch naval guns from the Royal Navy: one had been mounted on the HMS Ramillies and the other on both HMS Resolution and HMS Roberts. Both had been fired in action during the Second World War. They went on permanent display outside the museum in May 1968. The acquisition of these guns, representative of the dreadnought era of British battleships, led the museum to seek to acquire a 6-inch triple turret that would be representative of a number of classes of British cruisers. This would eventually lead to the preservation of the Royal Navy light cruiser HMS Belfast, which became a branch of the museum in 1978.

V-1 flying bomb on display

In 1969 RAF Duxford, a Royal Air Force fighter airfield in Cambridgeshire was declared surplus to requirements by the Ministry of Defence. Needing further space, the museum duly requested permission to use part of the site as temporary storage. The entire site was later transferred to the museum in February 1976 and Duxford, now referred to as Imperial War Museum Duxford became the museum's first branch. Also during the 1970s the government raised the possibility of the museum taking over the historic Cabinet War Rooms in Whitehall. The museum was reluctant due to its new commitments related to Duxford and HMS Belfast, but agreed in 1982. In 1984, the Cabinet War Rooms were opened to the public as a branch of the museum.

The atrium in August 2009. Ground floor exhibits include: "Devil" a Mark V tank; "Ole Bill" an LGOC B-type bus, V-2 and Polaris missiles, 800 mm shell from Schwerer Gustav, and (sand-coloured, extreme right) a Grant tank used by Bernard Montgomery. Suspended aircraft include a Sopwith Camel, Heinkel He 162 and (partially obscured) Supermarine Spitfire, which flew in the Battle of Britain and shot down three aircraft

During the 1990s, while redevelopment works were going on at Southwark, the museum was also seeking to open a branch in the North. In 1999, the project was begun to build 'Imperial War Museum North' in Trafford in southern Lancashire.

The following year, 2000, the final phase of the Southwark redevelopment was completed. The development included the installation of the museum's Holocaust Exhibition, which was opened by the Queen on 6 June 2000. Two years later, in July 2002, Imperial War Museum North was opened.

In October 2011 the museum rebranded itself as 'Imperial War Museums'.

In August 2009 the museum announced the creation of the Imperial War Museum Foundation, charged with raising funds to support the redevelopment of Imperial War Museum London's permanent galleries. In December 2010 plans were announced to redevelop IWM London's First World War gallery in time for the conflict's centenary in 2014. The redevelopment provides new gallery spaces dedicated to the history of the First World War, a new central hall, easier navigation and improved visitor facilities, access and circulation. IWM London was formally reopened on 17 July 2014 by Prince William, Duke of Cambridge.

The new atrium, July 2014. The exhibits include a Supermarine Spitfire, a V-1 flying bomb, a V-2 rocket, a Harrier jump jet, and Jeremy Deller's Baghdad, 5 March 2007, the wreckage of a car destroyed by a bomb during the Iraq War

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Imperial War Museum)

• Imperial War Museum
• Imperial War Museum within Google Arts & Culture