The Men Behind the Medals: The Real Charles Bourne – Part 2 With our new exhibition, Into Battle: The Art of British War Comics, opening recently this special installment of the Men Behind the Medals blog continues the story of a real Private Charles Bourne, serving with 2nd Battalion, Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry during the First World War. If you’ve not read Part 1, you can find it here. One…
New Oxfordshire Gallantry Board to commemorate the county’s military and civilian heroes On 22 October 2023 we open a brand new permanent display to celebrate some of the county’s most remarkable heroes – the 31 men who have been awarded the Victoria Cross, the George Cross, or the Edward and Albert medals that preceded its institution. We always aim to excite the curiosity of visitors through the diverse…
Join us for our Armed Forces Day celebration on 1st July 2023! Serving Armed Forces, Veterans and Cadets can visit FREE One week on from National Armed Forces Day, we’re inviting members of the Armed Forces community to come and enjoy the museum, a range of events, and our Women and War exhibition, FREE! Alongside our permanent exhibitions, covering the history of the county regiments and many other aspects of…
Their Finest Hour Second World War Digital Collections Day at Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum Join us at SOFO Museum to share your Second World War stories, photos and items on the 1st April 2023 – we’ll record your stories and photograph your objects to add to the Their Finest Hour online archive. The museum will open to visitors free of charge throughout the day and will be hosting a range of…
SOFO Summer Shelter Competition! To celebrate our recently opened Anderson Shelter display (built with the support of our wonderful Crowdfunder backers!) we’re running a special competition this Summer – show us your own home-made air-raid shelters and we’ll award prizes to the best! Plus, we’ll feature submissions in an online gallery – so they’ll all be museum pieces! Here are a couple of examples of shelters crafted by the museum team’s…
As part of our new exhibition, Children and Military Lives, we have invited contributors to share their stories of adventure, family and exile. 1944 to 1964 “I was born in the war you know” I say to my Grandchildren evoking a response from the older ones of “Which one Grandpa?” At which point I put them straight. I mention it to them as it begs further questioning from them about…
Children and Military Lives – Stories of Adventure, Family and Exile Exhibition – 2 June to 24 November 2022 The new exhibition will tell the stories of today’s service children (children of serving British Armed Forces personnel) and their experiences of living life in the military community, as well as stories of children who become victims of war, experiencing the effects of military conflict – from Second World War evacuees…
Military Life: A Child’s Experience – Appeal for Objects & Stories From June until November 2022, we have a new exhibition, Military Life: A Child’s Experience and one of the themes it will explore is what life is like for the children of serving military. We are covering the 1950’s up to present day and have lots of current material but very little that cover 1950-1990. If you have any…
An incredible story from the SOFO Museum Archives, Captain J Shaw’s account of how he became a Great War POW and his involvement in a number of escape attempts was originally published in three instalments in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry’s Regimental Journal from September 1931 to January 1932. A few years later, in March 1939, the Journal would also publish a number of Shaw’s sketches of the tunnel which he…
Visiting the E H Shepard Archives In September our Collections Manager Peggy visited the University of Surrey archives to see their E H Shepard archives, with a view to a potential exhibition at SOFO in 2023. The initial research follows the story of Shepard during his service with the Royal Artillery in the Great War, and explores the stories of other creatives who served in the Army. Peggy said of…
