HM Revenue & Customs

Coming here as a child was a baffling ordeal. For starters, I wasn’t exactly sure what drugs were or why they were grossly illegal, so to see people go to enormous lengths to hide them was just weird. Why didn’t they just smuggle them Britainwards under a shirt in their bag? X-​rays can’t see that far through stuff, surely?
Secondly, a lot of it was just dull. I don’t know about you but during my childhood years I was rarely intrigued by the UK border patrols or protests against fuel duty.
The museum improves further on, when the smuggle-​foiling tactics of the modern day (or the nineties when the exhibits were installed) are hilariously counteracted with methods from history. Instead of forensic teams and airport scanners, visitors learn about how the fearsome smugglers of ye olden times had little more to contend with than a man in a tri-​cornered hat, on a cliff, with a lantern.
In short, it’s a good museum that can teach you about how people lived in history, whilst simultaneously making you massively glad you don’t live there.

Visit ‘Seized!’ At HM Revenue and Customs; it’s absolutely fascinating. ‘Seized!’ investigates illegal smuggling and reveals the methods used by criminals and demonstrates the range of items that they smuggle, from drugs and weapons to counterfeit goods and alcohol; much of this is on display and there are interactive exhibitions and staff on hand to discuss the work of Revenue and Customs: the undercover surveillance techniques imposed, the major finds, the rise in gun and knife crime and the actions taken. This is quite an unusual exhibition, guaranteed to intrigue!