The Royal Green Jackets

This is the last time that I shall contribute to the E-Zine as Chairman of the Museum’s Trustees as I handed over to Brigadier Vere Hayes on 30 October and stood down as a Trustee. Brigadier Nigel Mogg also stood down as a Trustee after eleven years of committed and invaluable service.

During the 16 years I was Chairman I have witnessed great change in the wider museum sector and in the impact of that change on our Museum. Museums now have to be much more professionally and imaginatively run if they are to be sustainable over the mid to long term. Success is dependent upon offering a great visitor experience. Good governance, high standards of curatorial care, interpretation and display, and a sound fi nancial base are all essentials. Our Museum is scoring increasingly highly on all these points. We have an excellent Board of Trustees with a wide range of professional skills; we have a small but dedicated permanent staff backed up by equally committed volunteers; and we have fi nancial reserves that would enable us to weather a short-lived albeit not a lasting storm. Our growing reputation as a pro-active, innovative regimental museum is one in which I am very pleased to have been able to play a part and one which I know my successor and the Board are committed to preserve and develop further.

Looking to the recent past, the central event has been the ‘With the Rifl es to Waterloo’ exhibition which transited from being temporary to permanent on 30 September. Some items loaned for the temporary exhibition have been returned to their owners. The rest, including the Waterloo diorama, is as it was, so if you have not yet visited, there is time to do so.

The Waterloo exhibition has been a resounding success heralding a 41% increase in visitors during its fi rst six months and a likely one-third increase in visitors over the full year. The forecast for 2015 is an all-time record of 16,000. Admission income and over-the-counter shop sales are also well up, promising a good fi nancial outcome at the end of the year. As icing on the cake, the Museum received a MOD Sanctuary Runners-Up Award for the best Heritage Project in 2015, the fi rst time in

the history of these awards dating back to 1991 that a military museum has received a Heritage Award.

Our success with the Waterloo exhibition, and sustaining

ExhibiƟ on Title panel.

that success, is one of the big challenges facing the Museum in the years ahead. We not only see more clearly than before what else needs to be done to achieve similar standards of excellence throughout the whole of the Museum, but the value of step change rather than tinkering at the edges. Although it no longer falls to me to determine the best way ahead to achieve these ends, I know that it is high on the agenda of the Board. Meanwhile, I am not leaving the scene entirely as I am assuming a new appointment as Chairman of the Friends of the Museum, a position from which I shall continue to be able to give my fullest support to a Museum of which all of us in the Regiment, although I say it myself, should be proud.

Lt-Gen Sir Christopher Wallace

MUSEUM WINS PRESTIGIOUS HERITAGE AWARD

The Museum Curator ChrisƟ ne Pullen displaying the Heritage Award.

The Museum Chairman and Curator visited the Ministry of Defence on 15 October to receive the MOD Sanctuary Runner-Up Award for the best Heritage Project in 2015. This is the fi rst time in the history of these awards dating back to 1991 that a military museum has received a Heritage Award.

The award resulted from the imaginative way in which the Museum tackled the Bicentenary of Waterloo in 2015 with the introduction of a highly-acclaimed exhibition. The award also recognised the excellence of the conservation of its famed Waterloo diorama, its associated events programme during 2015, and its efforts to engage schools and the community in Waterloo-related activities. The judges, too, noted the uplift in visitor numbers of over 40% as an indication of the public’s appreciation of the value of the project and the manner in which it has been delivered.

The ‘With the Rifl es to Waterloo’ temporary exhibition marking the bicentenary of the battle ended at the end of September. A small number of loan items are being returned and the exhibition is now permanent. Visitors before and after 30 September will barely notice the difference. All the key features remain, including the much-admired Waterloo diorama.

During the six months that the temporary exhibition was open, the Museum enjoyed a 41% surge in visitors. The Museum has now received 13,327 visitors in the fi rst nine months of 2015, more than in the whole of 2014. Admission income has increased by 83% and shop turnover by 67%.

These are hugely encouraging results and a great fi llip for the small number of staff and volunteers who have helped to make the exhibition so special. If you have not yet seen it, you should. For further information see below or contact the Curator at curator@rgjmuseum. co.uk

The Waterloo Exhibition is open every day except Sundays between 10 a.m. and 5.0 p.m. (last entry at 4.15 p.m.). The exhibition has been part-funded by a £100,000 Heritage Lottery Fund grant. It is a condition of the grant that the exhibition will remain in place until at least 2020.

Emperor Napoleon’s rise to power from 1789 through to 1814, the Hundred Days following his escape from Elba, and his eventual defeat at the hands of the Duke of Wellington and his Allies at the Battle of Waterloo on Sunday, 18th June 1815.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is a huge 25 square metre diorama of the battlefi eld of Waterloo with over 30,000 model soldiers and horses. An explanatory sound and light commentary, narrated by Kate Adie, brings the battle to life in a manner which greatly impresses our visitors who have invariably seen nothing like it before.

Expert conservators, Kelvin and Mary Thatcher, spent fi ve months painstakingly removing 45 years of accumulated dust from the diorama in preparation for the exhibition. They cleaned and, where necessary, restored and repainted every fi gure by hand in their Norfolk workshop. During their work they were amused to fi nd a model-maker’s prank amongst the battle – a

British soldier laughing whilst urinating against a tree. There are many other portrayals on the diorama of key, as well as light-hearted, moments affecting individuals during the battle.

Two of the antecedent regiments of The Royal Green Jackets, the 52nd Light Infantry and the 95th Rifl es, played leading parts in the Battle of Waterloo, each with over 1,000 men. Each was awarded the battle honour ‘Waterloo’ in recognition of their courage and achievements on the battlefi eld. Generations of offi cers and soldiers in these regiments, The Royal Green Jackets and now The Rifl es have since been brought up to revere and take pride in the part played by their predecessors at Waterloo. The battle honour Commenting at the opening of the exhibition on 25 March 2015, the Chairman of the Museum’s Trustees observed that: ‘This is an exciting, new exhibition with hands-on displays and information that will interest all the family – children, parents and grandchildren, all of whom we encourage to visit as a group. We hope that it will inspire them and our other visitors to learn more about what was a defi ning moment in our nation’s history, and that all our visitors will depart having thoroughly enjoyed their time at the Museum and having experienced a visit second to none. In particular’, he said ‘why travel to Belgium when you can see the battlefi eld laid out before you in Winchester?’

Royal Green Jackets

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To contact the Museum, telephone or e-mail the Curator, Christine Pullen. Tel: 01962 828549 or e-mail: curator@rgjmuseum.co.uk To purchase items from the Museum Shop, for information about forthcoming events, and to read interesting articles about the Museum, visit www.rgjmuseum.co.uk