Sunday 24 January 2010

Medieval Armour at the Wallace Collection

The Wallace Collection; isn't that all about 18th Century furniture and paintings? yes, well, that and other stuff. We started off upstairs looking at these.

Did they find anything interesting?
generally all D needs is an animal in a picture and he's happy to look at it and they had plenty of pendulum clocks for B & L.

What other stuff? we actually went hunting for a bowl made by Palissy showing snakes, lobsters and fish. did you find it? we gave up and started looking at armour on the ground floor instead. This showed armour and arms from various places throughout the world from European knight chic to samurai swards (horses and cannons included).

Any more?
plus in the basement a few replica items including chain mail to try on? Sadly they only had adult sizes which kind of drowned L (aged 20 months). D's first reaction was "Hey! its like 'the return of the arthropods'"

On leaving the have-a-go-armoury we also found the relocated Palissy bowl; by then the Buggies weren't too interested though. Hey ho, another day...

What:
Mainly armour
Where: Wallace collection
Getting there: Walk from Bond Street
Cost: Free
Try: The Tower has a good display of armoury; there is also the imperial war museum and national army museum (I haven't visited either).

What do you call a knight who is afraid to fight? Sir Render!