Another vote for the Tower of London.

I visited about 1997, and it has a fantastic gun collection going back before medieval times.

I was there on a very slow day, and one of the curators noticed my interest in some early (ca 1550) air rifles. There was almost nobody else around the firearms (there was some special event that week regarding the Crown Jewels and everybody was oogling them), so the curator brought out a pair of white cotton gloves and opened the cases so I could handle these fine ancient rifles. I handled quite a few more modern guns, but it was these very old powerful compressed air rifles that impressed me the most.

Anyway, unless things have changed, the Tower of London is well worth it if you are at all interested in fine OLD firearms. Of course, you can see all of Henry the VIIIth's suits of armor as he got fatter and fatter... There is a lot of neat stuff there!

John

Last edited by jpb; 01/09/12. Reason: typoooooo