Interested in historical armament?

[razgriz33]

T'was a cold Easter morning, so I stayed in bed a little longer  . I went over to the lovely city of Leeds and visited the Royal Armoury Museum. If you're interested in all things guns, swords, pointy things, sharp things and shiny things then this is the place for you!

If you ever plan to visit car parking is not a problem and there's even some nice restaurants opening up to facilitate your belly.

 

Entry is free, unless your a tax paying British citizen then congratulations you've already paid!

So from walking in you're immediately greeted with an MG42! it's a kids play thing where you insert a quid into the slot and get to pew pew the bad guys. Looking up is impressive as you waft over to the reception desk you'll see a rather nice statue I was stupid enough NOT to take a picture of. Now me and my family were tipped off that there would be some jousting on display and after enquiring we had exchanged around a fiver each to see the three o'clock event. Book early to avoid disappointment and i should point out that I'm told jousting only really occurs around the Easter holidays. Who knew they had a world championship for hitting each other with lances on horseback?

 

Oh they also have actors pretending to be statues, here's a picture of a dude confusing the fuck out of the actor who probably thought we were in the same group.

 

First section! which also happens to be the shiny section.

 

 

above: Yes that's right, a moustache on a helmet, Italian designed but i can't remember much else on that one

 

below: Henry the 8th must've been a giraffe, his battle suit of armour stands really tall and now looking back at the picture, it's probably trickery, unless he really was a giraffe!

 

 

 

above: Apparently crotchless pants were a thing back in the day too. I don't have anything useful to say on this armour but I think it used to be a shiny blue, this pearlescent colouring was achieved by dangerously messing around with mercury while the armour was made.

 

below: Pointy things and horses making a great impact on the room. A rather impressive sight in person!

 

 

 

above: following on from the blue detailing of armour, here's the detail in somebody's knee plating, nothing is scarier than knee's with teeth! 

 

below: again to follow on from the previous detailing pictures, this last one really shows that an armour craftsman is also an artist. When you go to the armoury, have a read into the manufacturing process of each type of technique employed to reach a certain look, fascinating!

 

 

 

above and below: a siege tower I'm sure that some of you interested in this era will already have seen, however for the un-initiated, this thing moves towards a wall, perhaps of a city or a castle. When it gets to the wall, the chaps inside release the ramp, climb the ladders and seek to destroy the defenders!

 

 

 

 

 

Stay tuned for videos of Jousting, a "hurdy gurdy" in action, guns! and oriental armour!

 

here's a preview

 

 

 

[PiranhA]

Getting in the mooth to pickup the total wars series. Looking forward to the new Mount & Blade after seeing this.

[lexota]

Especially love the picture with the cavalry

[TheToxicPixels]

Can't wait for the videos

[Zak]

better than freezing my balls off looking at an old gun emplacement on "the island" in St. Ives

[razgriz33]

Here is part two then!

 

Firstly i gotta apollguize fur m3 poor grammer and spellin. It was written late at night in-between a water change on the ol fish tank

 

so back to my cool story bro:

 

Second Section

By now the time had come to venture out into the cold and catch the action at the jousting arena! The crowd gathering was warmed up by a jester on one half and a Mr "Tom Fool" in our half. Much hilarity ensued and the actors really do a great job. A ye olde instrument called the hurdy gurdy was played, I recorded it with my phone...but remembered that the sound input on my phone is FUBAR. So here are a few clips (You will need to be signed in with Google to see these clips)

 

Actually hitting each other with lances fell out of fashion in the sport, instead they hit a target that resembled a targe and counted how many times it would rotate

Playing for glory were the English team, who had yesterday Jousted in armour. Now in came the knights, I didn't capture the French entry to the arena however there was a fantastic set of that blue armour I mentioned earlier, you'll see a picture of it in detail later. So here's a video of the Polish team entering the arena. The excitement was building up to this fight, 2 vs 2 , Poland vs France... 

 

After several crashes of wood against metal, the winners of today's events were Poland, points were given depending on where hits were placed, for looking after your horse and for lance breakages. Here's a closer look at this awesome French blue armour.

 

 

Section three - Guns!

So moving back into the warm shelter of the museum we were thrust aloft towards the firearms section. There's lots to cover so I'll zip through but know that from early flintlocks, to the first pistols, to the first battle strategies right the way through to near modern day are featured and the pictures I have simply don't do it justice. Here goes!

 

 

Above: From the trenches of WW1 say hello to the Maxim Mark 1 Machine Gun, sitting next to it are other examples of WW1 machine guns

Below: Some examples of Early machine guns and gatling guns, unfortunately we were running out of time and so I didn't have time to read up much about these fantastic pieces

 

 

 

Above: Now if you'd have shown me this on payday2 as DLC I would have screamed FAKE! Seemingly drum magazines were tested on this (I think an Enfield design)

Below: When it came to hunting game, from birds to elephants hunting was a rather stylish affair, in fact women and designs for women were commonplace

 

 

 

Above: Comparison for various calibres

Below: Looks like everybody was friends back then

 

 

 

Above: An SA80, L96A1 and a L105A1 Pistol used in the Afghanistan conflict used by the British forces

Below: How HESCO barriers came to be!

 

 

Finally, the most interesting for me personally will be the Oriental section, including actual elephant armour and a HUGE gun. Until then   Thanks for the kind words.