AN EXHIBITION about citizen soldiers and their valiant efforts to protect Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire is attracting hundreds of visitors.

Dad’s Armies: The Amateur Military Tradition, is now being staged at the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock.

Museum director Ursula Corcoran said the new exhibition, created with staff from the Buckinghamshire Military Museum Trust, was attracting lots of interest.

The exhibition features uniforms, weaponry, drums, diaries and recruitment posters.

Ms Corcoran said: "The exhibition has been going very well and it will be here until December.

"Interest in the museum does grow at this time of year, with the Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal approaching, and we regularly gets lots of visitors coming here with research inquiries.

"The 100th anniversary of the end of the Battle of the Somme is also next month.

"This is the first time we have worked with the Buckinghamshire trust and the link has worked very well."

The museum's education and outreach officer Vicki Wood added: "We keep adding new elements to the exhibition, including a film about the Buckinghamshire home front and costumes that children can try on."

Ian Beckett, secretary of the BMMT, said earlier that local auxiliary forces – the militia, yeomanry and volunteers – and their successors in two world wars – the volunteer training corps and the Home Guard – were an important link between army and society.

He added they helped to keep order before police forces were established and were pillars of the community and part of the fabric of county life.

The museum in the grounds of the Oxfordshire Museum in Park Street opened during the summer of 2014, with Princess Anne cutting the ribbon in September.

SOFO highlights two county regiments, the Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars and the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.

The collections contain over 3,500 objects and 7,500 archive items dating back to the late 18th century.

They reflect the local regiments’ involvement in the War of American Independence, the Peninsula War, the Boer Wars, and the two world wars, together with less well-known events such as the New Zealand war of 1864 and the Brunei emergency in the 1960s.

The collections include weapons, equipment, clothing, flags, musical instruments and regimental silver as well as extensive personal memories, diaries, letters and photographs.

Military experts regularly give talks on a variety of historical themes and mark key anniversaries.

Last year this included the bicentary of Waterloo and 70 years since the end of the Second World War.

For further information visit sofo.org.uk