Metropolitan Police Heritage Centre facts for kids

The Metropolitan Police Heritage Centre is the museum and archive of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), conserving and curating documents, books, objects and uniforms relating to the organisation's history. It and the Crime Museum are both run by the MPS's Heritage Service. It has also been known as the Police Museum, Bow Street Museum, Metropolitan Police Museum and the Metropolitan Police Historical Collection over the course of its existence. However, most of the official records produced by the Metropolitan Police in or before 2012 are at The National Archives under the reference MEPO, with some also filed under HO - this is because the Metropolitan Police fell under the Home Office until 2012 and therefore its records were included in the Public Records Act 1958.

The first appeal for objects was put out by Chief Superintendent Arthur Rowlerson in 1949. The resulting collection was housed at Bow Street Police Station and then several other locations until June 2009. That month the collection settled in a new gallery space and research room in an annexe to Empress State Building, an MPS office building in west London. With the planned change of use of Empress State Building to a counter-terrorism hub, the gallery space permanently closed in early 2020 and the research room is due to reopen at another Metropolitan Police building near Woolwich Dockyard in 2021.