Just finished going round the new museum - very impressed! Hundreds of bows on display, with lots very close. The whole upper floor was essentially dedicated to the weaponry and had cases of bows, arrows in spacers and a small area where visitors could try pulling a laminated 80# bow.
Managed to make a couple of very useful contacts, one being the executive of the museum himself, and got a touch closer to getting to hold the bows. It wasn't this difficult last time! Pictures will be up a bit later, one thing to note when looking at the bows is how many of them (over half!) are actually reflexed right through the length. Could only find one example of a warbow with recurved tips, but you'll see in the pics a display plaque theorising that some of the bows may never have been used, hence the strong amount of reflex.
Sadly the only remaining horn nock and length of hemp string were tucked away very hard to photograph so apologies there, and for the dark grainy photos - no flash allowed of course and tricky to get clear shots in the darkness.
For anybody interested in the period, or the bows etc this is a must see. The new museum layout has the Mary Rose hull on one side, with all the artefacts arranged on the other in an identical mirror image placement system, so each floor of the museum represents a deck, and items are displayed according to where on the ship they were found. Very cool, very easy to get engrossed in, and the fact that so much effort has been put into the bows and their importance is I think a testament to the growing community of warbow archers and bowyers pushing the relevance and importance into the public eye!
