British Army chief backs plan to build new Royal Artillery Museum in Salisbury

The head of the British Army has signed a conditional commitment to a new Royal Artillery Museum being built in Wiltshire.

It will be a home for the thousands of exhibit pieces, including howitzers and shells, that have been in storage since the closure of the London venue in 2016.

Although planning permission still needs to be sought, General Sir Patrick Sanders has shown the Army's support for a new museum on 25 acres of land near Larkhill Camp.

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It will be the final element of the Royal Artillery's relocation from Woolwich to Salisbury Plain, hopefully establishing a major heritage centre at the heart of the Army's largest congregation of garrisons.  

The first Royal Artillery Museum opened to the public in Woolwich in 1820 where it started as a 'Repository of Military Machines' to train personnel, at the request of King George III.

It closed in 2016 with the hope of a new home on Salisbury Plain.

Major General Nick Eeles, chairman of the museum, told Forces News: "We're now fixed on the site which the Army has agreed on and the Chief of the General Staff has signed that declaration today.

"We have to look after this extraordinary collection in the meantime."

It is thought planning permission, design and building of the museum should take four to five years.