The Imperial War Museum (IWM), currently branded "Imperial War Museums", is a British national museum. Its headquarters are in London, with five branches in England. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, it was intended to record the civil and military war effort and sacrifice of the United Kingdom and its Empire during the First World War. The museum's remit has since expanded to include all conflicts in which British or Commonwealth forces have been involved since 1914. As of 2012, the museum aims "to provide for, and to encourage, the study and understanding of the history of modern war and 'wartime experience'."
Originally housed in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham Hill, the museum opened to the public in 1920. In 1924, it moved to space in the Imperial Institute in South Kensington and in 1936 it acquired a permanent home at the former Bethlem Royal Hospital in Southwark, which serves as its headquarters. The outbreak of the Second World War saw the museum expand both its collections and its terms of reference, but in the post-war period it entered a period of decline. In 1976 the museum opened IWM Duxford at Duxford airfield in Cambridgeshire, and in 1978 the Royal Navy cruiser , which is permanently berthed on the River Thames in central London, became a branch of the museum. In 1984, Churchill War Rooms, an underground wartime command centre in Westminster, were opened to the public. In 2002 IWM North opened in Trafford, Greater Manchester, the fifth branch of the museum and the first in the north of England. From the 1980s onwards, the museum's Southwark building underwent a series of multimillion-pound redevelopments, the latest of which was completed in 2022.
The museum's collections include archives of personal and official documents, photographs, film and video material, and oral history recordings, an extensive library, a large art collection, and examples of military vehicles and aircraft, equipment, and other artefacts.
The museum is funded by government grants, charitable donations, and revenue generation through commercial activity such as retailing, licensing, and publishing. General admission is free to IWM London (although specific exhibitions require the purchase of a ticket) and IWM North, but an admission fee is levied at the other branches. The museum is an exempt charity under the Charities Act 1993 and a non-departmental public body under the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. As of April 2024, the chairman of the trustees is Guy Weston. Since May 2023, Caro Howell has served as the museum's director-general.
History of the museum Establishment: 1917–1921
On 27 February 1917 Sir Alfred Mond, a Liberal MP and First Commissioner of Works, wrote to the Prime Minister David Lloyd George to propose the establishment of a National War Museum. This proposal was accepted by the War Cabinet on 5 March 1917 and the decision announced in The Times on 26 March. A committee was established, chaired by Mond, to oversee the collection of material to be exhibited in the new museum.'National War Museum. The Collection of Relics And Souvenirs', The Times, 26 March 1917 Issue 41436, page 5 column C
This National War Museum Committee set about collecting material to illustrate Britain's war effort by dividing into subcommittees examining such subjects as the Army, the Navy, the production of munitions, and women's war work.Kavanagh 1988 p.82 There was an early appreciation of the need for exhibits to reflect personal experience in order to prevent the collections becoming dead relics. Sir Martin Conway, the museum's first director-general, said that exhibits must "be vitalised by contributions expressive of the action, the experiences, the valour and the endurance of individuals".Kavanagh 1988 p.83 The museum's first curator and secretary was Charles ffoulkes, who had previously been curator of the Royal Armouries at the Tower of London.James Mann, 'ffoulkes, Charles John (1868–1947)’, rev. William Reid, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2006 accessed 22 June 2009 In July 1917 Mond made a visit to the Western Front in order to study how best to organise the museum's growing collection. While in France he met French government ministers, along with Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the Western Front, who reportedly took great interest in his work.'The War Museum. Sir Alfred Mond's visit to the front', The Times, 24 July 1917, Issue 41538, page 3 column C In December 1917 the name was changed to the Imperial War Museum after a resolution from the India and Dominions Committee of the museum.
The museum was opened by King George V at the Crystal Palace on 9 June 1920. During the opening ceremony, Sir Alfred Mond addressed the King on behalf of the committee, saying that "it was hoped to make the museum so complete that every one who took part in the war, however obscurely, would find therein an example or illustration of the sacrifice he or she made" and that the museum "was not a monument of military glory, but a record of toil and sacrifice".'The Greatest War Memorial. Opening by the King. Human Interest at the Crystal Palace'. The Times, 10 June 1920, Issue 42433, page 11 column D Shortly afterwards the (10 & 11 Geo. 5. c. 16) was passed and established a board of trustees to oversee the governance of the museum. To reflect the museum's Imperial remit the board included appointees of the governments of India, South Africa, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. While the act was being debated, some parliamentarians felt that the museum would perpetuate an undesirable war spirit and Lieutenant-Commander Joseph Kenworthy MP said that he would "refuse to vote a penny of public money to commemorate such suicidal madness of civilisation as that which was shown in the late War".Hansard, 12 April 1920 Imperial War Museum Bill HC Deb 12 April 1920 vol 127 cc1465-9 Hansard 1803–2005 Accessed 22 March 2009. On the August Bank Holiday 1920, the first public holiday since the museum's opening, 94,179 visitors were received, and by November 1921, 2,290,719 had visited the museum.'Public And Crystal Palace. Full Benefit Later', The Times, 15 November 1921, Issue 42878, page 5 column D
Relocation 1924–1936
In 1924 the museum moved to the Imperial Institute building (demolished in the 1950s and 1960s to make way for Imperial College) in South Kensington. While this location was more central and in a prestigious area for museums, the accommodation itself proved cramped and inadequate'The Imperial War Museum: Lack of Accommodation',The Times 25 August 1933 Issue 46532, page 13 column E and in 1936 a new permanent location was found south of the River Thames in Southwark. The building, designed by James LewisPeter Leach, 'Lewis, James (1750/51–1820)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 Accessed 12 March 2009 was the former Bethlem Royal Hospital which had been vacated following the hospital's relocation to Beckenham in Kent. The site was owned by Lord Rothermere, who had originally intended to demolish the building to provide a public park in what was a severely overcrowded area of London. Eventually the central portion of the hospital building was retained.Conway was addressing the House of Lords and his words recorded in Hansard. Quoted in
The two extensive wings were removed and the resulting space named Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park, after Lord Rothermere's mother. Sir Martin Conway described the building as "...a fine building, really quite noble building, with a great portico, a distinguishing dome, and two great wings added to it for the accommodation of lunatics no longer required. This particular building can be made to contain our collection admirably, and we shall preserve from destruction quite a fine building which otherwise will disappear". The "distinguishing dome" was added by Sydney Smirke in 1846 and housed the hospital's chapel.Imperial War Museum London (guidebook), (London: Imperial War Museum, 2009) pp. 5 The museum was reopened by the Duke of York (later King George VI) in its new accommodation on 7 July 1936.
Second World War and after: 1939–1966 With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the museum began to collect material documenting the conflict.'Imperial War Museum: Collection of war relics', The Times 14 May 1940 Issue 48615, page 4 column F In November 1939, during the "Phoney War", the museum appeared in the opening sequence of the GPO Film Unit production The First Days, in which children are seen playing on some of the museum's German artillery pieces captured during the First World War. With the Dunkirk evacuation in May–June 1940, the British Army's shortage of equipment saw eighteen of the museum's artillery pieces return to military service. The museum's trench clubs were used by the Home Guard, while other items such as sights and optical instruments were returned to the Ministry of Supply. The museum refused to return some historic items such as a naval gun from (which had fired Britain's first shot of the First World War) or a gun served by Victoria Cross-winning boy seaman Jack Cornwell. The museum was closed for the duration of the war in September 1940 with the onset of the Blitz. On 31 January 1941 the museum was struck by a Luftwaffe bomb which fell on the naval gallery. A number of ship models were damaged by the blast and a Short Type 184 seaplane, which had flown at the Battle of Jutland, was destroyed.Imperial War Museum London (guidebook), (London: Imperial War Museum, 2009) pp. 2 While closed to the public the museum's building was used for a variety of purposes connected to the war effort, such as a repair garage for government motor vehicles, a centre for Air Raid Precautions civil defence lectures and a fire fighting training school.
In October 1945 the museum mounted a temporary exhibition, the first since the end of the war in August, which showcased technologies developed by the Petroleum Warfare Department. These included the submarine fuel pipeline PLUTO, the fog dispersal method FIDO, and flame weapons such as the Churchill Crocodile and Wasp Universal Carrier.'Petroleum Warfare Exhibition: Secrets of Crocodile And Wasp', The Times, 5 October 1945, Issue 50265, page 7 column D Due to bomb damage to the building and exhibits, the museum was obliged to reopen its galleries piecemeal and opened a portion of its galleries in November 1946.'Imperial War Museum: Memorial and Record of Deeds in Two World Wars', The Times 31 January 1953 Issue 52534, page 7 column E A third of the galleries were opened in 1948 and a further wing opened in 1949.'New Exhibits in War Museum Galleries Reopened',The Times, 31 August 1948, Issue 51164, page 6 column E'Relics of Two World Wars Museum Wing Reopened', The Times, 23 February 1949, Issue 51313, page 6 column E In 1953, with Commonwealth forces engaged in Korea and Malaya the museum began its current policy of collecting material from all modern conflicts in which British or Commonwealth forces were involved. Despite this expansion of remit, the early postwar period was a period of decline for the museum. Noble Frankland, the museum's director from 1960 to 1982, described the museum's galleries in 1955 as appearing "dingy and neglected [and in a] dismal state of decay" the museum's "numerous stunning exhibits" notwithstanding.Frankland, Noble (1998) History at War: The Campaigns of an Historian (London: Giles de la Mare) p. 160
Redevelopment and expansion: 1966–2012