See some of the more unexpected objects from our collections. Items on display range from a section of the bar where the Dambusters crew used to drink to a sofa which troops in Afghanistan made out of HESCO bastion fencing. 

TRAINING

At the outbreak of the First World War aircraft were primitive and underpowered. When the British Army went to France in August 1914, they took 165,000 horses, both to ride and to pull wagons and guns. Soldiers depended on horses and needed to know how to look after them properly. This wooden horse was used to train new recruits. Saddles, bridles and reins all needed to be correctly fitted or they might confuse and hurt the horse. Training was everything as one day it might save theirs or someone else’s life.  

PACKAGING

Innocent packaging can mask dark secrets. In every games console the capacitors that hold and store high levels of electrical charge contain Columbite-Tantalite, or Coltan for short. Coltan is a key part of modern devices from Playstations, (like this PS2 in our collection) and Xboxes, to smartphones, laptops, printers and digital cameras.

Yet the United Nations describes Coltan as ‘the engine of conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’. 80% of the world’s Coltan lies in eastern Congo. Ruthless militias from the Congo and neighbouring Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi have illegally mined vast quantities of Coltan since 2000, mostly using enforced local labour. The violent struggle this has unleashed has caused over five million deaths. The cost of your gadget is much higher than the price in the shop.