The Royal Armouries Leeds

Visited 6th September 2003--------

Report by Shimmer & Midgey

Entrance free

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The Coach trip took 4.5 hours including a break for tasty chickenburgers that was only slightly marred by a slurring red-faced Irishman barging in front of the queue. He banged his hand down on the counter and half scared the poor girl serving to death whilst she was trying to change a £50 note shoved at her by the two oriental women in front of us.

Arriving at the Armouries, the coach drove past the tiltyard and dropped us off right outside the entrance. Impressive looking place, but looked to be a bit too modern to suit a collection of historical weapons that were until recently being kept in a nine hundred year old tower!

The entrance to the Armouries. Nice poster, I want one!A scale model showing the interior of the building. Not actually a doll's house. Sorry Midgey.

We walked past the shop, ignoring the temptation to check it out first and went up to one of the admissions desks only to be told they were out of tickets. Quite why we needed tickets for a free exhibition wasn't established as we were called over to the other desk where we were issued with tickets and bought a guide book. Struggling with the map. we made our way forward to the circular staircase up which was built around an amazing display of arms and armour called the Hall of Steel.

Skipping the first floor, which was closed we entered the warfare display on the second floor. There was a small cinema showing the history of war over the last thousand years or so. The film constantly repeated and was about 15 minutes long, and came in during the American Civil War part, and as we have little interest in this period and were on a timescale rushed out the other side into the warfare exhibition.

I don't know how some can sit so proudly when they're weilding something that's barely suitable for anything more than testing reflexes

After a none too spectacular opening room, the warfare room opened out into a large hall that started off with four mounted knights armed with pathetically small flanged maces. The knights were flanked by cabinets containing an assortment of medieval European weapons and armour. Following the path around we came to a diorama of several knights in combat, which lead into a section heading more towards modern times starting with the Civil War, through guns of the first and second world wars, a modern day soldier and finally a futuristic warrior.

I know whose side I'm on. Cheaty basts!

We crossed over into the tournament section, and looked down to the floor below where a lady in medieval garb was telling the tale of a joust. On the walls was information on heraldry and the workings of a tournament whilst downstairs there were suits of armour, included one mounted in full jousting regalia. Here was also the helmet from a spectacular set of armour gifted to King Henry VIII that is now used as a logo for the armouries itself.

The medieval storyteller was fenced off from the public in case her tales incited riotsA mask presented to King Henry VIII. His reaction wasn't recorded but I expect it contained several swear words and the phase "taking the piss" at least once.

Unfortunately we missed the actual jousting outside as we only had four hours there, and we weren't sure how to get to the Tilt Yard either, looked like you had to go out of the main building and walk along the road. We tried to find a window in the museum you could see the Tilt Yard from, but there didn't seem to be any pointing in that direction!

If only his colours had been white and red this knight could have got sponsorship from the local barbershop, how very shortsighted of him!More of Henry VIII's armour, apparently you can tell by the huge codpiece! Well giving him armour with a thimble sized codpiece probably would have got you executed so I guess the armourers erred on the side of caution.

On leaving the tournament display area we decided to have a small snack before venturing up to level four and the oriental display rooms. There are food courts and toilets on nearly every level, which we liked (maybe too many food courts tho, could use space for more weapons). We snarfed our way through a bag of ready salted crisps, a "bisc & bounty" and a chocolicious muffin and two icy cherry cola slushies!(between us that is!).

A deadly but slightly camp looking warrior with show-off arrows and an interesting taste in headgear.There must be a whole bunch of assassins running round using their fists as most of India's stock of katars seem to be here!

After a very long pee break (too much cherry cola slushie for the bladder!), onwards to the oriental section! There are more mounted figures here, the first being a scary looking Mongolian on an equally scary looking beasty. Not sure if it is just the rider that is scary or if it is the ambient lighting that's adding to the atmosphere. A fair amount of this section was given to display cases of katars and tulwars although there were some other types of more obscure arms and armour on display. The famous armoured elephant is situated in this area, and nearby is some impressive looking Samurai armour.

Woah, scary! Like the fake moustache especially, strike fear into the heart of enemies that would!The armoured elephants were used to great effect until the other side started training mice to wear chainmail.

From here we went to the sports and self defence section, which pretty much seemed to house leftovers from the rest of the museum, including a huge sword that one wouldn't readily associate with self defence. There were also some fencing swords and a marvellous full-length painting (shown below). As time was getting on we didn't spend as long in here as we'd have liked and soon moved on to the hunting section. Time still being an issue, we managed only a cursory look around this section, but we were impressed by the sheer overkill factor of the duck-hunting cannon and sickened by the whaling harpoons.

I'm still not sure whether they are fighting or dancing. Looks a bit camp either way.

With 45 minutes before our coach was due, we headed to the shop. It soon became apparent that this wasn't long enough to see everything as the shop was well stocked. Initially we were impressed by some of the replica arms and armour, but Shimmer wisely/eventually decided against a purchase (we later found out the exact same items were on sale online for half the price!). We ended up with a helmet paperweight,a few postcards and a book called "The Sword in the age of Chivalry" .

We exited the shop and were going to check out the confectionary stall nearby when Midgey took pity on a harassed looking Armouries employee trying to get sucke... I mean people to fill in a customer satisfactory survey. This turned out to be much longer than we were expecting, and our coach arrived before we were finished, causing us to dash off.

A helm with moustache armour? What's the point of this? Wear it and when your opponent is pissing himself laughing stab him in the neck? Could be.Well we know where the props from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon came from now.

Our overall impression of Armoury was brilliant, loads to see and well laid out, although the arrangement of weaponry meant it was difficult to find a specific item. For example, there were a surprising amount of similiar looking Katars there and instead of being bunched togther under a separate Indian section, they were spread around the museum in three or four batches.

My only other real critism was that the range of weapons wasn't as wide as I had hoped, and I couldn't see any of my favourite weapons there. The Wallace collection wins out in that department as they have a lot less quantity but more variety and include 3 of my favourites (flamberge, 5 bladed katar and sword gauntlet). As Midgey pointed out though, at least you are allowed to take photos at Leeds!