New firearms display at Pitt Rivers now open

[helen]

Hello all,

Just to let those of you in the South England vicinity know that the new permanent firearms display at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford is now open to the public. The display features over 300 objects from a first millennium 'Greek fire' bomb to late C20th automatic weapons. I will take some photos to put up here soon!

Thanks,

Helen

[Douglas Jr.]

Helen,

Lovely news indeed!

As it is impssible to me to check the new display, I would love to see the pictures!

Douglas

Edited May 6, 2010 by Douglas Jr.

[helen]

Images of new displays attached.

Helen

[helen]

intro and handcannon/matchlocks

[helen]

matchlocks and wheel-locks

[helen]

Snaphance, miquelet and flintlock

[Mervyn Mitton]

Helen - a superb collection and very well mounted and displayed. I wish I could pay a visit - would make the effort if you have a ticket supplied.........

Please show me what you think a Greek 'firebomb' looked like. It contained a mixture of oil + other substances we are not sure about. I always understood that they were in clay pots and when thrown by the catapault, shattered on impact.

Best wishes Mervyn. Will look forward to lots more postings now ?

** Sorry Helen - we seem to have posted at the same time. Perhaps someone can move my reply to after your post ? However, I must say, the new close-ups are really great.

Edited May 7, 2010 by Mervyn Mitton

[helen]

flintlocks and horns...

[helen]

flintlocks, blunderbusses and aurguns

[helen]

percussion...

[helen]

percussion and combination weapons

[helen]

end C19th-ww1

[helen]

interwar and WW2

[helen]

Post-1945 - the END!

[Eric Stahlhut]

excellent! thank you for sharing.

[helen]

Sorry for some of the hazy visuals on these photos -if only we could afford non-reflective glass!

Mervyn - thanks for your comments! Sadly, I'm not sure our expenses could stretch to a ticket from SA but please do let me know if you want to know anything more about a particular object. And yes, I am officially working on something else now (sadly not to do with weapons) but hopefully I will finally be able to get around to your truncheons!

As for the 'Greek fire bomb' you are right about how it works - usually filled with some bitumen-, petrol- or sulphur-based mixture I believe and a small hole with a fuse. Ours was discovered in a rubbish dump at Fustat, which was Byzantine captial of Egypt until 1168. So, it might have been among those used against the Arab incursions in 639 or, more likely, much later against Saladin in the 1160s before the city was abandoned.

Best,

Helen

[helen]

photo

[Douglas Jr.]

Helen,

Many thanks for posting the pictures.

Simply put, it is an outstanding display of guns, with a nice collection.

I really like the approach using the timeline to display the guns. It seems obvious, but you don't this kind of organization very often.

Congratulations, you and your colleagues did a nice job.

Douglas

[helen]

Thanks Eric and Douglas for the nice comments. Yes, there was some discussion about the schema of display - some thought that chronological was far too boring and ordinary but I don't really see how you can follow the progression any other way. In the end in fact, there was a bit of date mixing by putting the objects in sub-divisions based on their firing mechanism - the matchlock muskets included C16th English examples as well as C19th ones from Asia.

Helen

[Chris Boonzaier]

Fantastic,

The "Lonelyplanet" guide to London gives your museum a thumbs up as a day trip to Oxford... i hope to get there sometime.

Best

Chris

[peter monahan]

Fantastic,

Fantastic is right! Definitely on my list of 'must-sees' when next I cross the big pond. Congratulations on a grade A exhibit!

Peter

[MG1918]

Helen - can you give a summary on the history of the General please? Any machine guns in this amazing collection?

Mark

[helen]

Hi Mark,

No machine guns - sorry! We've had a policy ofnot collecting any large small arms or artillery, due our space restrictions,both in terms of storage and display (our display cases are at best a footdeep). The biggest thing we have is a Bren (although we have some very long duck guns and some heavy medieval hand cannon!)

The General was born Augustus Lane Fox in 1827 (he acquired the title and estates of 'Pitt Rivers' in 1880). As a captain in the Grenadier Guards, he was appointed in 1851 to a committee set up byWellington (then Commander in Chief) to experiment and report on various newrifled infantry weapons to find a replacement for the Brown Bess. Lord Hardingetook over the role of C-i-C in 1852 and another Grenadier, Studholme Brownrigg (great name!) was president of the committee. From 1851, Fox began to collect all sorts of guns from all over to take them apart and see how they worked. He even had prototype models made up for him, including a musket with a revolving chamber, a breech-loading rifle with a version of Dreyse's bolt-action (which had only really been introduced in Prussia a few years before in the late 1840s) and guns with experimental, adjustable sights. In fact, he was more interested in projectiles than mechanisms and did a lot of work testing the various new ideas. See attached image from his talk, 'On the Improvement of the Rifle as a Weapon for General Use' given at the Royal Service Institution in1858. He was an advocate of the Minie bullet design, which was what the Army eventually adopted for the Pattern 1853 Rifled Musket Enfield. We have a prototype of the P53 made for Fox.

Fox was sent to study the modes of weapons training used in France and Belgium and draw up a code of instruction. His 'Instruction of Musketry' was implemented at the new School of Musketry set up at Hythe in Kent in 1853 and Fox became principal instructor there under Colonel Hay. During the Crimean War, Fox was dispatched to Bulgaria and Malta to conduct training inthe field but we have no record of whether he actually saw any action himself. We know he was involved with the Battle of Alma. He was shipped back home on grounds of poor health before the end of the war. He fell out with Hay at Hythe so resumed rifle training in Malta 1855-57, whereupon he was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel. In the 1860s he was posted as Assistant Quartermaster General in Canada and Ireland.

By this time he had amassed an impressive array of guns from all eras and areas and had also moved into collecting other weapons such as bows, shields, throwing knives, swords etc, as well as other ethnographic items. He was determined to apply Darwin's theory (then all the rage) to material culture, by charting the development of man-made objects from the 'primitive' (according to Fox, found among the native peoples of Africa, Australia and N. America) to the 'civilized' (unsurprisingly, those items madeby white, European men!) His ideas concerning evolution of culture weren't entirely wrong (indeed in firearms, a traceable line of development is quite clear) but he couched his arguments in such as way that is now considered redundant and politically incorrect.

He wasn't much of a 'field collector' though – got most of his stuff from auction or more itinerant associates at the RoyalSociety etc. He retired in 1882 with honorary rank of Lieutenant-General and turned his attention to archaeology. He died in 1900.

We have 155 firearms and accessories attributed to Pitt Rivers and a further 5000 weapons – over a quarter of his 'Founding Collection' given to us in 1884. Obviously a great deal many more firearms have been added to the collections since then (over 1500).

Hope that suffices! There's an entry on him on Wikipedia but it doesn't elaborate much on his military life.

Helen

[Oiva]

Sirs, I was suprised not to see a M-1 Garand on display ,but a M-1 carbine? Regards, Oiva

[helen]

I'm sorry Mark, all this unexpected sunshine in the UK at the moment has gone to my head! Wewe DON'T have a Bren (it would be on display if we had!) But I think it was in my mind because it's on a list of 'desirables' I'm drawing up - guns it'd be really nice to get for the collection. The list includes a Winchester too! So in terms of 'big guns' nothing on that power scale - instead just a couple of sub-machine guns (e.g. Sten, UZI) and battle rifles (H&K, FN FAL).

Helen