These include broadswords from the Scottish Highlands, protection against chemical warfare, and letters sent home from combat by personnel.

It also houses a gallery, with works such as The Thin Red Line by Robert Gibb, and a library.

[4] Various movements proposing museums dedicated to warfare arose during World War I, and the consensus amongst those involved was that they should be regional in nature.

Preliminary ideas for a Scottish museum were drawn up in 1917 by Alexander Ormiston Curle, curator of the National Museum of Scotland, under advice from organisers in London, as well as a civic committee of the Edinburgh council, set up by Lord Provost John Lorne MacLeod.

[8] The museum project was resurrected in the late 1920s by the Duke of Atholl,[8] utilising a building inside Edinburgh Castle which was built in the 1748 by William Skinner as a storehouse for ordnance.