Poppys Museum lies in the heart of the Normandy village of Montchamp in Northern France.

Within a short drive from the DDay landing beaches, the museum is dedicated to the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards who liberated the village in early August 1944 and to those brave French Resistance fighters who resisted their Nazi oppressors and occupiers during those dark and difficult years of 1940 to 1944.

Our museum is situated alongside Poppys Tea Room, a 1940’s themed experience and is a sight and sound experience too. Designed to let you appreciate what it must have been like as a soldier fighting to capture our village of Montchamp during that hot August of 1944, where in hand to hand savage fighting, the Welsh Guards overcame the superior numbers of 9th SS Panzer Grenadiers, with their feared panzer tanks, panzerfausts and nebelwerfer rockets.

You can learn how English cricketer and Welsh sporting legend, Major Maurice Turnbull led the No2 Company Welsh Guards attack into Montchamp, only to be killed by machine gun fire from a panzer tank in the village. Maurice was 38 years of age and before the war had played cricket for Cambridge University, Glamorgan and England, rugby for Cardiff and Wales plus hockey and squash for Wales too!!

Experience too, the exploits of Welsh Guard Sergeant Bill Mapp, how he drove his bren gun carrier into the woods above Montchamp with an urgent battlefield message for his officer, Major Lister, only to be hit by an exploding shell and nearly decapitated. His officer escaped unhurt in the incident, only to be killed some days later.

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Montchamp 2004 - 60th anniversary of DDay. A day of remembrance honouring both the British troops that liberated Montchamp, and the French resistance fighters. .

Montchamp was a hotbed of French Resistance during the Second World War following the occupation of the village by the German troops on 15th July 1940, so much so, that shortly after the war, General De Gaulle visited the village to inaugurate a memorial to those resistance fighters – many of whom were shot in Caen Prison and some who disappeared without trace, even to this day. A gallery in the museum pays homage to those brave French patriots.

Opening soon - please call for details Groups welcome. Disabled facilities. Entrance fee : 4 euros per person (children under 12 : 2.50 euros) Visitors to the tea room spending 10 euros per head and Normandy veterans : free