Britain's Revolution of 1688
In January 1696, work began to fit out the first floor as ‘an Armory for small Guns’, under the direction of a gunsmith.John Harris of Eton, who had fashioned designs from old weapons to decorate the walls of the guard chambers at Hampton Court, Windsor Castle and St James’s Palace. The Ordnance master carpenter, Henry Haywood and the master carver, Nicholas Allcock, also worked on the designs.
Ascending a staircase at the western end of the building, the visitor passed through a screen to a fantastic sight.The north and south walls each had eight pilasters of pikes with capitals of pistols set in the Corinthian order. Between them were displays including moons and fans of bayonets and pistols arranged around a target of bayonet blades, and another set in carved scallop shells decorated with ‘ornaments of pearls and Currell with drops of Shells at the Ends’. The ‘Waves of the Sea’ were reproduced in bayonets and brass blunderbusses, with capitals of pistols over them. The rising sun was radiant with rays of pistols; a pair of folding ceremonial gates stood under an arch made of halberds and cavalry carbines and a battery of guns in swords and pistols. The “Back Bones of a Whale’ were made of carbines. The carved head of Medusa, ‘commonly called the Witch of Endor’, complete with snakes, was set within three ellipses of pistols. Allcock also provided Jupiter riding ‘a fiery Chariot drawn by Eagles, as if in the Clouds, holding a Thunderbolt in his left Hand, and over his Head a Rainbow”.At the western end, Harris created two pyramids of pistols with carved wooden heads, arranged on eight circular ornaments on wooden pedestals. Down the centre of the room were large gun racks interspersed with eight square and eight circular columns of pikes and pistols. All this was arranged around 16 chests, said to contain 1,200 muskets each.In die centre of the room, near the entrance from the Grand Staircase, stood four columns decorated with spirals of 900 pistols and carved Corinthian capitals. Between the columns a large pendant in the shape of a falling star hung from the ceiling.
At the eastern end stood a great organ ten ranges high, with brass blunderbusses for the large pipes and around 2,000 pairs of pistols for the smaller. It was flanked by a ‘fiery serpent” whose body was made from pistols, and by a seven-headed hydra, whose carved heads and wings were joined by pistols. Completing the displays at this end were two armours wrongly attributed to Henry V and Henry VI.