Orders, Decorations and Medals

The Companion of Honour group of three awarded to Harold Arthur, Viscount Dillon, first Curator of the Tower of London Armouries, Chairman of the Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery, President of the Royal Archaeological Institute and of the Society of Antiquaries, Trustee of the British Museum and of the Wallace Collection, a leading authority on the history of arms and armour and medieval costume

The Order of the Companions of Honour, G.V.R., neck badge, silver-gilt and enamel, the reverse inscribed ‘Harold Arthur Viscount Dillon 1921’, with length of neck ribbon; Jubilee 1897 (Harold Arthur Viscount Dillon PSA, PRIA); Coronation 1911, unnamed as issued, good very fine (3) £2500-3000

Ex Hayward’s Gazette, December 1975.

Harold Arthur Lee Dillon was born on 24 January 1844, and was educated at a private school at Eltham, Kent, and at Bonn University. He joined the Rifle Brigade in 1862, was promoted to Lieutenant in 1866, and served in India and Canada during the Fenian troubles of 1868-71. He left the regular army in 1874, but was promoted to Captain in the Oxfordshire Militia and eventually retired with the rank of Major in 1891. In the following year he succeeded his father as the 17th Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen.

On leaving the army Dillon became interested in modern military subjects such as equipment and dress, which eventually led him to the history of arms and armour and medieval costume. Dillon traced hundreds of illuminated manuscripts and illustrated works and made a series of brass rubbings. When he would enter a gallery he would focus only on those paintings with military themes, concentrating on sword hilts, armour and horse trappings, and skillfully copied them.

His first works were published shortly after he left the army. These articles related to his home, Ditchley in Oxfordshire and described flint tools excavated from the area and objects from the collections in the house. He published many articles on the subjects of arms and armour and military history which appeared in academic journals such as the Archaeological Journal and Archaeologia as well as journals of popular and military general interest such as Antiquary and Colburne's United Service Magazine. He would also write on the subjects of arms and armour in pictures, on monuments and in Shakespeare, on tournaments, military equipment, soldier's arms, equipment and life. His first major undertaking was a revised edition of F. W. Fairholt's two volume Costume in England, published in 1885. Three years later he published a paper on the sections of the great 1547 Inventory of the possessions of Henry VIII. In his writings Dillon focused on the defensive and offensive characters of armour rather than as a work of art.

Many of his articles appeared under his own name, but he would sometimes use the pseudonym 'Armadillo.' The animal was so closely linked with Lord Dillon that the designer of a commemorative medal produced for the National Portrait Gallery used an image of an armadillo for the reverse of a medal bearing the portrait of Lord Dillon.

Although Dillon was associated with the Tower of London Armouries from 1892, serving as the consultant scientific expert, he was not officially appointed curator of the Armoury until 1895. He was tasked with producing an accurate and up to date catalogue of the collection. As curator he was able to reduce historic inaccuracies that had built up over the previous years. In 1827 Samuel Meyrick had brought expert knowledge to the collection, but it had then fallen into the hands of the War Office storekeepers and unfortunately most his work was lost. Labels were misplaced, and suits wrongly mounted and erroneous traditions had been established for public amusement.

His research led him through the State Papers, especially those of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, in which he discovered interesting and valuable details about the making and issue of arms and armour. Dillon dismantled nearly every piece of armour in the collection to see how it was worn and the reason for certain constructional details. Most of the pieces were those of Henry VIII. Dillon even tried them on himself to see how the rivets and the joints of the harness worked and discovered that many of the suits had been wrongly assembled This exercise enabled him to rectify countless inaccuracies. He also examined the internal mechanisms of the crossbow, pistol and gunlocks.


In 1910 Dillon's Illustrated Guide to the Armouries was published, being a summary catalogue of the arms and armour as he had arranged and exhibited them, and the various manuscript inventories of the collection. Dillon carried out a complete reorganisation of the collection in preparation for the new catalogue, and made a detailed examination of all the major pieces as well as identifying a number of those with important historical associations, and corrected inaccuracies. The catalogue was more in the format of a guided tour rather than a systematic catalogue.

Dillon considered his task to be one of preserving and studying a closed collection rather than expanding it and spreading knowledge of it outside the Tower. His two significant acquisitions for the collection were a pistol of Prince Charles, purchased in 1898 and a part visor of King Henry VII found in St James' Palace in 1906. One of his most valuable contributions was the Armourer's Album which appeared for sale in Paris and by Dillon's efforts was purchased and preserved in the Victoria & Albert Museum. The album contained a number of watercolour drawings of suits of armour of the Elizabethan period that were made at Greenwich, many of which were in the Tower, together with the names of the owners, which proved invaluable for establishing provenance and for identifying pieces in the Tower, Windsor and other private collections.

Lord Dillon contemplated retiring in 1909, but finally retired from his post of Curator in 1912, and handed the Armouries over to Charles Foulkes. Dillon left the Armouries on its way to becoming a modern museum. A catalogue had been completed, a programme of inspections of loans had been established, and regular inventory checks were carried out. Armour and weapons were displayed according to the techniques of the day, with labels and a guidebook describing the displays.

He received an honourary degree of Doctor of Civil Law from the University of Oxford and the Order of Companion of Honour by the King in 1921. Dillon served as a trustee to the British Museum, secretary to the Royal Commission on Westminster Abbey, President of the Royal Archaeological Institute of the Wallace Collection, Trustee and Chairman of the Board of the National Portrait Gallery, Honourary Member of the Armourers and Brasier's Company of London, Fellow of the British Academy and Antiquary of the Royal Academy. Harold Arthur Lee Dillon died on 18 December 1932. The group is sold with a ‘Souvenir Album of the Tower of London, with Historical and Descriptive Notes by The Viscount Dillon P.S.A.’