Browse this section to see some of our most popular collections.
The Fusilier Museum holds an extensive range of firearms and infantry weapons dating back to 1700 to the present day.
The collection includes a large range of pistols and rifles from WW1 and WW2 as well as the rare Edward 8th 1897 pattern officer’s sword. The most famous rifle in the collection is the late 19th century Vitelli M1870 which has beautifully carved wooden parts and is purported to have belonged to Winston Churchill.
The uniform collection at the museum has items dating from the early 1800s to the DPM camouflage worn by the current day soldier.
Highlights include the tunic worn by Major General Robert Ross who commanded the expeditionary force which drove the Americans out of Canada in the 1812 war and then defeated the Americans at Bladensburg. He later captured Washington and burnt the White House and other public buildings in the capital. It also includes the tunic of Surgeon-Major Arnott how tended to Napoleon on his death bed and performed his autopsy on the island of St Helena in 1820. The museum also has two rare surviving Officers uniform jackets from the First World War. One was from worn by a Colonel who served in the Boer War but the former owner is unknown. Items are added to the collection all the time, the most recent being a full set of uniform, kit and equipment that the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers used on their last tour of Afghanistan in 2013.
There are 3000 items in the medal collection at the museum which includes 8 Victoria Crosses, 7 from the First World War and 1 from the Second World War, some of which are on loan from the recipient’s families.
The collection also includes an Albert Medal (Gold), the forerunner to the George Cross awarded for gallantry in saving life. Only 45 Albert Medals (Gold) were awarded for gallantry on land, so this is a rare surviving example. Awarded to 2 LT Douglas Wood in 1916 for bravery during an incident with a grenade in the trenches whilst serving with the 19th Battalion, the 3rd Salford Pals. Medals awarded for more recent campaigns, including the Gulf War and a George Medal awarded to a Fusilier for bravery in Iraq are also included.
Many of the paintings included in the collection were originally owned by the Regiment and some were displayed in the Officers’ Mess, often commissioned and gifted by its members.
The collection is characterised by portraits of notable members of the regiment which includes an oral painting of Fusilier Francis Jefferson VC who was awarded the Victoria Cross at Monte Cassino in Italy for single-handedly destroying a German tank. It also comprises of battle scenes such as the famous Gallipoli landings in 1915, for which the Lancashire Fusiliers won ‘Six VCs Before Breakfast’. The Collison-Morley collection consisting of 85 watercolours was painted in the early 1900s when Collison-Morley was serving with the Regiment (1901-8). This includes scenes from Crete, Gibraltar, Malta and India whilst serving with the 1st Battalion, The Lancashire Fusiliers. The most recent additions to the collection are a series of watercolours depicting scenes over the last 50 years, including Fusiliers in Belfast, training in the Falklands and on operations in Afghanistan.
The Fusilier Archive holds more than 1000 photographs dating from the middle of the 19th Century to the present day.
This includes a collection of some of the earliest photographs ever taken of Japan, dating to the 1860s when the XXth Regiment of Foot were based there as the first British Regiment to enter Japan. The collection also has images of all Lancashire Fusilier battalions during the First World War including albums of the territorial battalions heading to Gallipoli via Alexandria in 1915, depicting scenes on board ship and in Egypt before they sailed in the Gallipoli peninsula. There is also an extensive collection of photograph albums from China during the interwar period when the 1st Battalion were stationed there during the 1930s.The archive also holds photographs from Second World War theatres of war including: France, Italy and Burma.
The Fusilier Archive has diaries dating from the Crimean War to the end of the Second World War. The collection includes the diary of Alf Smith who was born in Bury in 1890 and played for Bury Football Club before the First World War.
Serving as a pre-war territorial he was called up to serve during the First World War. The diary recounts in detail his war, including the famous 1914 Christmas Truce which saw a football match being played against the Germans in No Man’s Land. Also included in the collection is the diary of Charles Ryder who served during the Second World War, recounting his time and France and the evacuation at Dunkirk.
The museum has an extremely large collection of Regimental silver dating from the middle of the 1800s when the Regiment was still called the East Devonshire Regiment.
They record campaign, sporting achievement and personal milestones of members of the Regiment. The majority of silver is still owned by the Regiment but is cared for and displayed by the museum. One of the most iconic pieces in the collection are the silver drums which were commissioned by the Regiment as a memorial to the Lancashire Fusiliers lost during the First World War. It includes a bass drum, two tenor drums, eight side drums and six bugles funded by the Lancashire Fusiliers War Memorial Fund in 1921. The collection also has a remarkable table centrepiece commemorating the Lancashire Fusiliers lost during the Boer War as well as numerous trophies, plates, dinning pieces and bowls.
