Barracks, Bombs and Buckingham Palace - The Guards Museum
Wellington Barracks, Birdcage Walk, London, Greater London, SW1E 6HQ
The Guards Museum is bringing history out from its cases and into your hands in a weekend you don’t want to miss!
Highlights of your weekend will include a trip to the historic re-enactors camp, testing your aim with the Army Cadets, and the chance to immerse yourself in heritage – whether its handling objects from our collection, or stepping into the King’s Guard iconic uniforms yourself. Our experts will be giving free museum talks, from soldier’s stories to Royal tales. For the little ones, a whole host of activities from wordsearches to code-breaking to a trip through the battlefields of Waterloo.
As for this year’s theme, we are lucky to be surrounded by some of London’s most exceptional architecture. The museum sits on the site of Wellington Barracks, a Grade II listed building made in the 1800s, designed to give the Guards’ close proximity to Buckingham Palace in an emergency. It is here that the famous Changing of the Guard ceremony begins, as the soldiers’ set off for their duties. Just next door is the stunning Guards’ Chapel with its own story to tell, having been destroyed by V-1 flying bomb in the Second World War and rebuilt in the legacy of this tragedy.
We invite you to come along and uncover the secrets behind these structures, and of course dig deeper into the Guard’s internationally renowned role protecting some of the world’s most famous buildings – our Royal Palaces.
Wellington Barracks, Birdcage Walk, London, Greater London, SW1E 6HQ
The museum can be accessed via a flight of stairs or a fully accessible lift.