From badges and helmets to the latest personal protective equipment, our uniform collection covers all the 999 and partner emergency services, including everything from early prototype female uniforms, through wartime innovations, to present day riot gear. Component collections include headgear, duty and dress uniforms, personal protective equipment, and accessories such as buttons and service patches.
Our Collection covers the history of all four 999 emergency services- ambulance, coastguard, fire & rescue and police- from their modern origins in the 19th Century, to the present day. In addition, we hold objects related to predecessor services such as insurance fire brigades and parish policing, and today’s 999 partner services including: the RNLI, Mountain Rescue, Lowland Rescue, Cave Rescue, and specialised professional services like Defence Police, and Defence, industrial and airport fire & rescue.
We aim to make records of our collections available online as soon as possible. While we continue our cataloguing journey, you can explore our vehicle fleet and other featured objects below.
Historic vehicles
Our historic fleet comprises over sixty motor vehicles from all four 999 services and their partner services, as well as horse drawn and manual vehicles. More info coming soon.
Featured objects
This section of the museum's collection explores some of our featured object from the following themes:
Equipment and Technology, Social and Cultural History, Archive and Library, and Uniforms
Our archive and library are rich resources of documentation, books and photographs that illuminate all aspects of the emergency services: their institutional history, the incidents they deal with, their social history, their vehicles and technology, their people, and even their animals.
- Records: Ledgers, notebooks and printed reports from a variety of historic and extant emergency services.
- Photographs: All aspects of emergency service work and life are represented, including early police mugshots, vehicle and station photos, event photos and family photos.
- Ephemera: Including letters, postcards and scrapbooks; the personal archives of emergency workers.
- Maps and architectural plans: Including division maps and plans for fire and police stations.
- Printed material: Including educational posters, pamphlets and leaflets.
- Print media publications: Including newspapers and magazines.
- Training and instructional manuals: Including vehicle and equipment manuals, training textbooks, and on-duty instruction guides.
- Audiovisual material: Including oral history recordings, film and documentaries.
- The Library includes: Secondary source books, journals and newsletters.
From 18th century fire buckets and police truncheons to the latest hi tech medical technology, our collections include a vast array of equipment that the emergency services have used and continue to use in carrying out their duties. Examples include:
- Manual equipment: Including fire buckets, ladders, axes and hooks, police truncheons, ambulance patient care equipment such as stretchers and bandages, and early Coastguard throwing canes.
- Mechanical equipment: Such as police cameras, handcuffs, and Coastguard foghorns.
- Chemical equipment: Including fire extinguishers from early glass grenades to modern foam and powder sprays, breathing apparatus, and police forensics equipment such as fingerprinting powders and chemicals.
- Electrical equipment: Including paramedic kit such as defibrillators and respirators, police speed cameras, communications devices, and modern robotic technology.
Our collections reflect the lives of emergency service workers and allow us to explore how changes in society have affected them. From the role of women to the impact of war, these objects tell the stories of services and individuals. The emergency services have also left an important cultural footprint in art, design, architecture and beyond, a legacy that continues to grow. Examples of items held include:
- Art: Including paintings, drawings and prints; vehicle art and design; graphic art; architectural designs for fire and police stations; and artworks created by emergency workers themselves.
- Decorative arts: Including Fire Marks, station lanterns, signage, ornaments, plaques and furniture.
- Medals and militaria: Including civilian medals awarded to emergency workers, insignia, ceremonial weaponry and flags.
- Models and toys: Including architectural models, scale model emergency vehicles, figurines and board games.
- Public safety incidents collection: Objects of all types representing the incidents that the emergency services exist to respond to. These include crime and disorder handled by the police, public health emergencies handled by the ambulance service, fires handled by fire and rescue, and natural disasters and terrorist incidents requiring multi service responses. Items include historic criminal evidence gathered by the police, PPE used during the Covid 19 pandemic, and objects damaged in fires.
