Ahead of English Tourism Week (14th to 23rd March), we explore the Royal Armouries Museum by Leeds Dock.
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00:00I'm Florence Symington. I'm Director of Branding Audiences at the Royal Armouries Museum and we
00:05are here in Leeds today to have a little look around at what we offer. The Royal Armouries
00:11presents an absolutely fantastic day out for families and for couples and really for everyone
00:18and we are a free, completely free day out and every single day at the Royal Armouries you can
00:23experience not only our amazing collection of arms and armour but also our programme of daily
00:30activities. We'll have demonstrations because everything in our collection has been held,
00:36has been used, has been designed by people and we really want to try and bring that to life.
00:42They wanted people who could ride horses hard and fast. I did know that they wanted archers
00:48and swordsmen and people with performance skills but most of all a love of history and the ability
00:56to absorb information like a sponge and in 1996 Her Majesty the Queen opened the museum and I've
01:04been here ever since and it's been it's been a wonderful journey. When I look around the museum
01:10it has so many memories and the best jousters from around the world come to the Royal Armouries. It
01:16is seen as the centre, the pinnacle and in many other ways this museum which sort of sits in West
01:23Yorkshire is not a London museum, it's a national museum celebrated by the Yorkshire folk for the
01:30last 30 years so I'm very proud to be part of the museum. We welcome over 300,000 visitors and arms
01:38and armour can be a kind of tricky subject, it's quite controversial at times but really we're
01:45about conflict but we're also about peace as well and we're about the history of our nation.
01:50Behind me we have a little exhibition about the sort of journey of modern jousting. It started in 1963
01:58with a chap called John Waller and John Waller was my mentor but also probably the father of
02:04live interpretation as far as history is concerned. In our exhibition which is all about the field of
02:09cloth of gold, a bringing together of England with Henry VIII and the French as well
02:17with King Francis I and that was a real spectacle and what that encompassed was really an
02:23opportunity for Henry VIII to show off. One of the engravings on the armour itself was actually
02:31done by error, this is made in 1520 and here we are today still noticing the little error that
02:39one of the armourers has made. When you go to a glass case and you look at a sword or an armour
02:45the more you look the more you see so my eye gets turned almost every time I walk through the
02:50gallery and as I said I've been walking through the galleries nearly 30 years so to have something
02:55beautiful and new to see every time is a wonderful place to live and work.