Imperial War Museum to close world's largest display of Victoria Crosses

26 February 2025, 16:54 | Updated: 26 February 2025, 16:56

London's Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London has announced plans to close its huge display of Victoria Crosses.

The Lord Ashcroft Gallery’s collection of 200 Victoria Crosses (VC) and a smaller number of George Crosses (GC) are set to be off limits to the public from this summer.

They have been on display since the gallery’s opening in 2010 after billionaire Lord Ashcroft’s £5 million donation and a loan of his personal collection of medals.

Now, the gallery is set to permanently shut on June 1, a spokesman announced on Tuesday.

It means Lord Ashcroft’s entire collection will be returned to him and ‘hidden away in a secure vault’, the spokesman added.

Lord Ashcroft has claimed he was only informed of the decision seven months after it was made last July.

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Lord Ashcroft wrote for LBC Views: “I was hugely disappointed when I discovered, through a third party, that the Imperial War Museum in London no longer wants to display my collection of Victoria Crosses (VCs) and George Crosses (GCs).

“Their decision, announced on Tuesday, to close the Lord Ashcroft Gallery on June 1 marks the end of an era, until now a happy one at that.”

He urged those who have not visited the gallery so far to ‘do so over the next three months before it closes and the decorations gather dust in a vault.’

“Unfortunately, there is insufficient time to find a new ‘home’ for the medals whereby they stay on public display,” Lord Ashcroft added.

The move has also left veterans up in arms, sparking fears that the country’s former soldiers could be forgotten.

The IWM has said a much smaller collection of VC and GC medals will be “displayed across our UK branches [and] integrated within galleries that tell the full story of the conflicts in which of these acts of bravery occurred”

The closure will make way for new displays of post-Second World War conflicts, including in the Falklands, Iraq and Afghanistan, which are “less well represented”, the museum added.

The 15-year-long loan of Lord Ashcroft’s medals was always due to expire in 2025, it claimed, arguing it had liaised with his representatives in 2023.

An IWM spokesperson said: "Like all museums, we regularly update our galleries to ensure we can share as much of the 33 million items in our collection as possible with the public. We are very proud to have displayed the Lord Ashcroft Medal Collection at IWM London since 2010, made possible thanks to a generous 15-year loan by Lord Ashcroft. IWM London has proudly displayed Victoria Crosses and George Crosses since 1968, and we remain committed to sharing these stories of the greatest acts of bravery and sacrifice in defence of our nation with the public.

"We plan for VC and GC medals from IWM's collection to continue to be displayed across our UK branches, integrated within galleries that tell the full story of the conflicts in which these acts of bravery occurred. Over the past 10 years at IWM London, we have opened new galleries exploring the First and Second World Wars, The Holocaust, and our art, film and photography collection.

"Our displays exploring the past 80 years of post-Second World War conflict, including the Cold War, Falklands War and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, are less well represented. Our aim is to address this by creating new gallery spaces on upper floors at IWM London, which will allow us to share more stories of conflicts that are within many of our visitors’ living memory.

"To prepare for the development of these new spaces, The Lord Ashcroft Gallery at IWM London will close permanently from 1 June 2025. We are enormously grateful to Lord Ashcroft and the other private lenders who have enabled us to display these important medals since the gallery opened."