The Donnington Historic Weapons Collection is a collection of weapons accumulated by

MoD Donnington MoD Donnington is a British military base situated to the north of Donnington, Telford, Shropshire. History The site was chosen in 1936 as one of a number of less vulnerable locations for storing ordnance and other military equipment previously ...

Shropshire Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to th ...

, England, over a long period of time. It is now housed at the Combined Military Services Museum in

Maldon Maldon (, locally ) is a town and civil parish on the River Blackwater, Essex, Blackwater estuary in Essex, England. It is the seat of the Maldon District and starting point of the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation. It is known for Maldon Sea ...

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

, England.

The collection

was part of the

Defence Storage and Distribution Agency The Defence Storage and Distribution Agency was an executive agency of the Government of the United Kingdom under the Ministry of Defence (MoD). The DSDA operated from locations in the United Kingdom and northern Germany and was the storage and di ...

(DSDA). Historically Donnington was the storage area for all weapons used by the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

. Part of this function was the disposal of old, captured and obsolete weapons. The majority of these were converted to scrap metal. In the years Donnington has been functioning, many items returned for disposal were deemed worthy of retaining because of their rarity or historic significance. In all, a collection of over 700 items was amassed varying from civilian and sporting arms to captured foreign weapons. In 2010, a decision was made by the

Ministry of Defence {{unsourced, date=February 2021 A ministry of defence or defense (see spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is an often-used name for the part of a government responsible for matters of defence, found in states ...

to gift the collection to a public museum. Under the guidance of

Kevan Jones Kevan David Jones (born 25 April 1964) is a British Labour Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for North Durham since 2001. He served as a defence minister under Gordon Brown, and resigned as a shadow defence minister ...

MP, then Under Secretary for Defence it was decided that the Combined Military Services Museum in

would be the recipient of the collection. The museum received a lottery grant to extend its premises to facilitate this and now has it on public display. The existence and details of the Donnington collection and its transfer to a public museum appears in the DSDA Annual report and accounts for 2008–2009. The opening ceremony of the collection to the public at the Combined Military Services Museum in Maldon, was performed by Kevan Jones, the Under Secretary for Defence, in April 2010.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Opening ceremony at Combined Military Services Museum Maldon

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Year of establishment missing Collections of museums in the United Kingdom Weapons of the United Kingdom History of the British Army History of Shropshire Culture in Essex