Leeds Royal Armoury
Oh yeah! This is the place to check out. Sure The Wallace Collection has some better stuff, but the shear amount of nice armour and weapons is mind-boggling.
The Armoury is in Leeds, not at Leeds Castle as some might think. Eight ThamesReach SCA people headed up in two cars, and after a hideously slow trip, we made Leeds, saw the town and did some shopping/eating/drinking. We spent the whole of the next day at the Armoury. From 10:30 till 6:00.
There are demos and talks about various time periods, some multi-media "touch screen" computers, and of course knowledgeable curators. Most stuff is divided into areas of similar time periods, although the sign-posting was a little vague, so that you would wander around a particular, or even enter the next zone without realising it. But apart from this niggle, things went fine.
The first thing you see is the stairwell with weapons displayed in designs 
, you often see
these around British museums, but the number and variety was impressive. So while
Hampton Court has some sabre and musket designs, Leed's designs made out of 12'
polearms really make you go Wow! Then it was time to explore some of the 6 floors of
items.
The main zones are :
 | War - Early Medieval, Late Medieval, more modern |
| Hunting |
| Asian |
| Self defence |
| Tournament |
The titles can be a little deceptive, with other similar genres sneaking in. I loved the Early and Late medieval, so many items you have seen in books, and others that are works of art. You would never fight in the stuff for fear of damaging it, but to pose...
Apart
from pretty armour, they had functional armour, some set displays of knights in action
poses, and multimedia displays to help explain how/what/why something was done. I
did like the fact they tried to use mannequins to hang the armour off, much better than
"pole stands" that makes the armour not sit quite right.
"Henry the eight I am, I am..." so so the song goes, and boy was he a
big fella! 
I love the size of his codpiece, I am assuming he was
working on the ablative crumple-zone theory. The Tournament section had some nice
examples of jousting armour, but was a little disappointing compared to the quality of the
war section. 
Still, it is far better than most places. The next
place to visit was the Asian section, and boy did they have some nice stuff!
Including genuine Mongol armour - helmet, and quiver, with a slightly later lamellar
coat. Most was unfortunately Japanese armour, but I guess they are pretty, and more
common/survivable than the Mongol/Chinese who actually used their stuff more often.
Let us not forget the War-Elephant, surely the ultimate accessory for the warrior who has
everything. 
It is well worth the trip up north, but I would advise taking the train, more room, and less hassle. If the railways doesn't kill you of course... There is lots of stuff to see, and it is surprisingly informative. However for the hard-core, the displays are often front only, so you don't get to see much of the sides. The lighting is quite dim in places, and this combined with trying to shoot through glass means that my photos didn't always turn out too well. Maybe a tripod for next time. Lastly, there just isn't enough on display, I KNOW it is only a fraction of the total amount they own, and (probably because of cost) there are still many empty spaces that could be filled with display-cases.
The chicken was quite nice from the ground floor food place.
