The Fusilier Museum, London
This regimental museum offers a good guide to the Royal Fusiliers but Rachel Souhami wanted to see a broader view of military, social and political history
I don’t consider myself to be particularly unfit, but after my trip to the Fusilier Museum I realise that I’m a bit of a weakling.
I learned that today’s fusiliers carry backpacks weighing 80kgs. Displayed not far from the backpack is a machine gun, which doesn’t look easy to carry either.
It seems to be a far cry from the first days of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers whose history is displayed in a renovated exhibition at the regiment’s museum in London. The museum is within the walls of the Tower of London, a site closely linked to the history of the Fusiliers.
The regiment was formed in 1685 by James II and was posted to the tower to guard the Royal Armoury. The museum building, built in 1845, originally served as officers’ quarters and today houses the regimental headquarters.
This is reflected in the interior of the wall-to-wall carpeted museum, which has a slightly cramped feeling as though the exhibition has been squeezed into a few spare rooms.
Long-barrelled fusil
The exhibition covers four rooms on the ground floor: a room of medals to the left of the entrance and the historic collections on the right.
If you want to view the regiment’s history in chronological order you have to ignore the first room and make your way along a corridor that is lined with portraits of former officers and a case containing a very long gun.
This is a fusil, the weapon that gave its name to the regiment. It used a flint to ignite the gunpowder rather than a slow burning fuse, which is why it was these soldiers’ weapon of choice.
The historical displays skip the first 90 years of the regiment’s history and start with its campaigns during the American war of independence. Here, one is reminded about the hand-to-hand nature of combat at that time, for although the fusiliers had muskets, they also fought with swords.
An officer’s red coat reminds visitors of the stature of the soldiers – they were tiny by today’s standards – and that protective clothing had yet to be invented.
As the chronology unfolds across the first two rooms we see the change into khaki uniform, various means of protecting soldiers against conditions in foreign climes (such as a spine protector against heatstroke), and read more about the many wars the regiment has participated in.
There is surprisingly little about changes in weaponry; indeed, most of the guns on display seem to have been taken as trophies from opposing armies.
Oversights
What is missing is a coherent approach to the social history of the Fusiliers. Dotted throughout the first two rooms are snippets about the army’s treatment of soldiers, the regiment’s patrons and individual soldier’s stories but they don’t present a cogent picture of army or regimental life unless visitors are prepared to put in some work.
For example, although there are plenty of quotations from individual soldiers dotted throughout the exhibition, visitors are only shown one or two sentences. Who were these soldiers? How do we know what they said about their life in the army? Why aren’t their letters or notebooks on display?
Similar comments can be made about other aspects of the regiment’s history. A text panel describes the appalling conditions soldiers lived in during the 19th century, while in another case is a silver wine cooler presented by William IV and presumably enjoyed by officers. The difference in living standards can be inferred, but a braver exhibition might be more explicit about such matters.
Global political contexts are also overlooked. The 38th to 42nd Battalions of the Fusiliers were formed at the outbreak of the first world war and became known as the Jewish Legion because they comprised Jews from the UK, US, Russia and Canada.
This display takes up about one quarter of the second room, a significant amount of space, so one wants to know how and why the legion formed and what happened to it, but this information isn’t given.
The third room of the exhibition presents the modern fusiliers. It skims over recent campaigns to present an image of technical competence, camaraderie and extreme fitness. An audiovisual exhibit – the only one with sound – is almost a recruitment video, in which current and former fusiliers extol the virtues of the regiment.
Across the corridor is a whole room of cases and drawers of medals awarded to individual fusiliers. They are beautiful but it’s difficult to understand the significance of the awards as there is little explanation.
Alongside the display of the equipment and clothing used by today’s fusiliers are two touchscreen interactives that give visitors access to archive material.
In a way, these exhibits summarise the exhibition: there is a wealth of material here, with some great stories about how and why people joined the regiment, life as a solider, why they were sent to war, and how the regiment has developed. But the documents are presented with little context or information about their origins.
Visitors will come away well versed in the history of the Royal Fusiliers, but it could have been so much more: the museum could have offered a window through which to view wider military, social and political history.
Rachel Souhami is a freelance curator and a lecturer in science communication at Imperial College London
I learned that today’s fusiliers carry backpacks weighing 80kgs. Displayed not far from the backpack is a machine gun, which doesn’t look easy to carry either.
It seems to be a far cry from the first days of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers whose history is displayed in a renovated exhibition at the regiment’s museum in London. The museum is within the walls of the Tower of London, a site closely linked to the history of the Fusiliers.
The regiment was formed in 1685 by James II and was posted to the tower to guard the Royal Armoury. The museum building, built in 1845, originally served as officers’ quarters and today houses the regimental headquarters.
This is reflected in the interior of the wall-to-wall carpeted museum, which has a slightly cramped feeling as though the exhibition has been squeezed into a few spare rooms.
Long-barrelled fusil
The exhibition covers four rooms on the ground floor: a room of medals to the left of the entrance and the historic collections on the right.
If you want to view the regiment’s history in chronological order you have to ignore the first room and make your way along a corridor that is lined with portraits of former officers and a case containing a very long gun.
This is a fusil, the weapon that gave its name to the regiment. It used a flint to ignite the gunpowder rather than a slow burning fuse, which is why it was these soldiers’ weapon of choice.
The historical displays skip the first 90 years of the regiment’s history and start with its campaigns during the American war of independence. Here, one is reminded about the hand-to-hand nature of combat at that time, for although the fusiliers had muskets, they also fought with swords.
An officer’s red coat reminds visitors of the stature of the soldiers – they were tiny by today’s standards – and that protective clothing had yet to be invented.
As the chronology unfolds across the first two rooms we see the change into khaki uniform, various means of protecting soldiers against conditions in foreign climes (such as a spine protector against heatstroke), and read more about the many wars the regiment has participated in.
There is surprisingly little about changes in weaponry; indeed, most of the guns on display seem to have been taken as trophies from opposing armies.
Oversights
What is missing is a coherent approach to the social history of the Fusiliers. Dotted throughout the first two rooms are snippets about the army’s treatment of soldiers, the regiment’s patrons and individual soldier’s stories but they don’t present a cogent picture of army or regimental life unless visitors are prepared to put in some work.
For example, although there are plenty of quotations from individual soldiers dotted throughout the exhibition, visitors are only shown one or two sentences. Who were these soldiers? How do we know what they said about their life in the army? Why aren’t their letters or notebooks on display?
Similar comments can be made about other aspects of the regiment’s history. A text panel describes the appalling conditions soldiers lived in during the 19th century, while in another case is a silver wine cooler presented by William IV and presumably enjoyed by officers. The difference in living standards can be inferred, but a braver exhibition might be more explicit about such matters.
Global political contexts are also overlooked. The 38th to 42nd Battalions of the Fusiliers were formed at the outbreak of the first world war and became known as the Jewish Legion because they comprised Jews from the UK, US, Russia and Canada.
This display takes up about one quarter of the second room, a significant amount of space, so one wants to know how and why the legion formed and what happened to it, but this information isn’t given.
The third room of the exhibition presents the modern fusiliers. It skims over recent campaigns to present an image of technical competence, camaraderie and extreme fitness. An audiovisual exhibit – the only one with sound – is almost a recruitment video, in which current and former fusiliers extol the virtues of the regiment.
Across the corridor is a whole room of cases and drawers of medals awarded to individual fusiliers. They are beautiful but it’s difficult to understand the significance of the awards as there is little explanation.
Alongside the display of the equipment and clothing used by today’s fusiliers are two touchscreen interactives that give visitors access to archive material.
In a way, these exhibits summarise the exhibition: there is a wealth of material here, with some great stories about how and why people joined the regiment, life as a solider, why they were sent to war, and how the regiment has developed. But the documents are presented with little context or information about their origins.
Visitors will come away well versed in the history of the Royal Fusiliers, but it could have been so much more: the museum could have offered a window through which to view wider military, social and political history.
Rachel Souhami is a freelance curator and a lecturer in science communication at Imperial College London
Project data
- Cost £350,000
- Main funder Heritage Lottery Fund £300,000
- Exhibition design and project management Headland Design
- AV software Resolution DV
- AV hardware Fusion LX
- Display cases ClickNetherfield
- Construction Early Action
- Mountmaking Activation and Technical Models