Abstract
This article provides a brief history of the British Ministry of Defence Pattern Room collection, incorporating a personal perspective upon its final days from the author, the final Custodian of the collection. The article explains the origins and original purpose of the Pattern Room, before tracing its growth into a world-renowned collection of small arms and light weapons. A little over a decade after relocating from Enfield, Middlesex, the facility was earmarked for closure and the collection put up for disposal by the owner on the basis that it no longer met the Ministry’s “core activity”. The author describes the resulting ordeal of trying to find a new owner, while at the same time keeping the collection complete and having to meet deadlines for site closure. Finally, the article relates the ultimate transfer of the Pattern Room objects to the only organisation able to offer a new home for the complete collection—the Royal Armouries Museum—and the eventual opening of the National Firearms Centre on 1 September 2005.
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Issue: Vol. VII No. 2
Published: 30 Nov 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52357/armax87895
Peer-reviewed?: Yes
Keywords: small arms & light weapons, collections, Ministry of Defence, United Kingdom
Bibliographic Information
Richard D. Jones, ‘A Brief History of the Ministry of Defence Pattern Room’, Armax: The Journal of Contemporary Arms, Vol. VII № 2 (2021), pp. 35–56, <https://doi.org/10.52357/armax87895>.
About the Author
Richard D. Jones is currently Curator Emeritus, National Firearms Centre at the Royal Armouries in Leeds. Beginning with enlistment into the British Army at the age of fifteen as a Junior Gunner, in 1961, the author has had a lifetime of involvement with weaponry, both professional and personal. A subsequent transfer to the Intelligence Corps saw a career emphasis on technical intelligence duties, with tours of duty supporting ballistic, captured weapons, and ammunition intelligence. It was through these activities that Mr. Jones came into contact with what was then the Ministry of Defence Pattern Room collection. After the collection was relocated from Enfield to Nottingham, he formally joined the staff as a civil servant in the position of Assistant Custodian in late 1994. Having been appointed Custodian in December 2001, Mr. Jones oversaw the transfer of the collection from Nottingham, through temporary storage in several locations, to its new facility at the Royal Armouries site in Leeds, in September 2005. Following retirement, he took up his current position.