National Army Museum. The National Army Museum is the British Army's central museum.
It is located in the Chelsea district of central London, adjacent to the Royal Hospital Chelsea, the home of the Chelsea Pensioners. The museum is a non-departmental public body.
It is usually open to the public from 10:00am to 5:30pm, except on 25-26 December and 1 January. Admission is free.
Having reopened in March 2017 following a major E23.75 million re-development project including E11.5m from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the museum houses five galleries that cover British military history from the English Civil War up to modern day. This remit for the overall history of British land forces contrasts with those of other military museums in the United Kingdom concentrating on the history of individual corps and regiments of the British Army.
It also differs from the subject matter of the Imperial War Museum, another national museum in London, which has a wider remit of theme but a narrower remit of time. The National Army Museum was first conceived in the late 1950s, and owes its existence to the persistent hard work of Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer, who did most of the fundraising for it. It was established by Royal Charter in 1960, with the intention of collecting, preserving, and exhibiting objects and records relating to the Regular and Auxiliary forces of the British Army and of the Commonwealth, and to e