The Museum is very happy to share that this year’s Wartime Britain event went off with a bang! (or should we say bangs?)

This year, we welcomed more private collectors, re-enactors and living history groups than ever before. We learned about wartime rationing, tried our hand at manoeuvring an anti-aircraft gun and stuffed our faces with Crown’s Café’s BBQ burgers. We have received some amazing feedback from visitors and we’ll work on making any changes necessary to keep the event improving year on year.

Children manually 'operating' an anti-aircraft gun during the event.

This year, we sadly were unable to offer ‘live’-firing of artillery, however we more than made up for it (we hope you’ll agree) with several ‘live’ small arms demonstrations throughout both the Saturday and Sunday. We offer our special thanks to ‘Tom und Jerry’, Gloucestershire Regiment Re-enactment Group and ‘Monty’s Misfits’ for their well-informed and exciting demonstrations. Though we’re used to the loud bangs of the artillery shells, some of us were rather shocked at quite how loud a pistol or rifle can be when you’re just a few metres away!

The Gloucestershire Regiment Re-enactment Group demonstrating a 'live'-firing of a two-inch mortar.

If you joined us this weekend, we hope you thoroughly enjoyed your visit. If you have any feedback, please check your booking email address for a survey link to let us know how you found your visit and offer your comments on what we can do to make it even better. If you didn’t receive one and would like to complete the survey, please contact us.

If you didn’t make it this time, never fear! Wartime Britain is one of our biggest annual events and it will be back in May 2024 (specific dates to be confirmed towards the end of this year).

All that’s left to say is thank you to all who supported our running of the event, from contributors and re-enactors to our wonderful volunteers, to you, our visitors, without whom we would simply not have an event.