Collection: Royal Hampshire Regiment Museum

Collection-level records:

• Collection history (Collection development policy)

  The collection of the Royal Hampshire Regiment has been maintained and displayed in Serle’s House almost as long as the building has been associated with the Regiment, since the late 18th Century. It was initially used as a training resource for the Regiment’s soldiers and officers, before becoming formally established as a museum and opened to the public in 1934. However, various items were bought by, or donated to the Regiment and therefore owned by the Regiment, and displayed in the battalions’ Messes and headquarters in disparate locations both in the UK and overseas. Formal museum records were started in the 1950s for a period, and then restarted in the 1970s, and so the catalogue is incomplete as to provenance of items, and which belonged to the Regiment rather than the museum. Many items are listed as being owned by the different battalions, but the Regiment was amalgamated in 1992 into the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, and so these battalions no longer exist in their original form and so the museum has assumed ownership of the artefacts.

  The collection can be divided into 2 categories: that which is on display and the archive and storerooms. The whole of Serle’s House used to belong to the Regiment, then the War Office/Ministry of Defence. It was sold to Hampshire County Council, together with its Memorial Garden in 2002, and the museum now leases part of the ground floor and the Memorial Garden from Hampshire County Council. The display area cannot be increased because of the limited rooms available in the lease, and the use of the rest of the building, but the 2 exhibition galleries display artefacts covering the history of the Royal Hampshire Regiment in the following case groupings:

  • 1702 to the turn of the 20th Century
  • First World War
  • The Inter-War period
  • Second World War
  • Conflicts and areas of operation post WW2 up to the amalgamation of the Regiment
  • Conflicts involving the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment (PWRR)

  Almost all the Museum collection has been acquired through donation rather than purchase. A very small number of items of particular significance to the Regiment are held on loan, however this is being reduced, with arrangements being made to bring the items formally into the collection as donations. Some less important items on long loan were returned to the families in 2022 and 2023.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2023

  Licence: CC BY-NC

• Collection overview (Collection development policy)

  In line with the Statement of Purpose, the Museum is interested in, and is concerned almost exclusively with, collecting material relating to the history and actions of the Regular, Service, Territorial, Volunteer and Militia battalions of The Royal Hampshire Regiment and its antecedent regiments, and those that served in or were associated with them. Due to the nature of the old regimental collections, there are some items for which the relevance and lack of provenance is problematic as we are unsure as to why and how these were collected. Many of these archives and artefacts are being sorted through with a view to potential disposal. The museum also has many duplicate items; again these are being rationalised.

  The museum holds around 5000 medals, including campaign, gallantry and sports medals. It holds uniforms and equipment from the 1750s onwards which belonged to individual soldiers, as well as archive material for the same period.

  The museum’s photographic collection is particularly large, with around 200 albums and around 3000 individual photographs dating back to 1860. These include both official war photographs, portraits, team and group photos from all periods, and a large number of personal photographs taken by soldiers from the late Victorian period onwards. The photographs are gradually being digitized, and catalogued, and further work will be completed on this in the future. They are a particularly good source of historical ethnographic material, as there are many images of local scenery and people from around the British Empire where the soldiers were stationed at the time.

  Other items held include firearms, swords and other bladed weapons, silverware in the form of both trophies and mess centrepieces, paintings and prints, flags and colours, drums and other musical instruments, and ‘souvenir’ items brought back by soldiers from their service around the world, including items taken from prisoners in WW2 and Malaya, and items bought to take home.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2023

  Licence: CC BY-NC