We are often asked how long we have been here at Southfields Farm. From the main road, although the brown sign with the tank on and in fact a tank mark the entrance to Armourgeddon, unless you knew we were here, you may not expect to find all that we have to offer at the end of the (presently rather pot-holed) track.

Armourgeddon is run by husband and wife team, Stuart and Tracy Garner with a brilliant, hard working, loyal bunch of guys and girls with one thing in common- a varying degree of tank and military vehicle based obsession.

Stuart was a pig farmer when he and Tracy met due to random coincidence in Nuneaton. Both had new cars they wished to head out in for the evening, so each with a car full of friends, they headed out and ended up in the same pub in the town. Stuart’s family had farmed Southfields Farm for many generations but the thought of full time farming drove Stuart to think of alternative income streams for the land the farm is based on.

Stuart and Tracy set up Chaos Paintball as a partnership in 1991. By 1992 they were married and although Tracy was still working as a Facilities Manager at Axa, Chaos went from strength to strength.

11 years later and with two children added to the family, Stuart, who had always been heavily interested in military vehicles, watched Kelly’s Heroes, a 1970 film where a group of U.S. soldiers sneaks across enemy lines to get their hands on a secret hoard of Nazi treasure. Potentially, this could have gone one of two ways, but luckily for us, Stuart decided to find out if it were possible to mount a cannon atop a tank to fire paintballs rather than head off on a hunt for buried treasure in the German countryside! Looking back, I’m not sure which Tracy would have seen as the more likely to become lucrative!

Being a farmer and therefore having spent his life mixing things, once Stuart had sourced his first tank, he managed to solder an air cannon to the top and integrate the mechanisms for the first paintball-shooting tank in creation! Stuart soon added a second tank and the support of a local mechanic, who fitted the subsequent air cannon, by the summer of 2003,  Armourgeddon Tank Paintball had been invented.

The journalist Robert Hardman heard about us and brought his Dad up to Armourgeddon for a tank paintball battle in that first full season and had a brilliant time. In writing a double page spread in the Daily Mail following his visit, Armourgeddon gained notoriety from the world’s press; Stuart was interviewed live on air for the American news channel ABC, articles were written in a Japanese newspaper, as well as Finnish and of course UK based tabloids.

And from that, Armourgeddon grew into the centre for all things military that it is today. The fleet of specialist tanks and military paraphernalia grows almost by the week with the museum now housing a plethora of the most significant tanks in Allied military history from the Centurion to the Sherman. There are now in excess of 50 tanks on site at Southfields Farm.

In 2015, Stuart and Tracy’s son, Alex who was already a Director of Chaos Paintball and running the show, despite still being at school full time, began Armourgeddon Airsoft, which he runs as a sole trader. Alex hosted 4 sold-out Airsoft days at Armourgeddon in late 2015 with the next event of the 20th March. Armourgeddon Airsoft is a full day of airsoft games as well as entry to the museum and lunch, from 9am for just £32. Interested? Buy on line from the Airsoft page.

Since that day watching Kelly’s Heroes, the opportunities to mix military history, mud and actually driving a full sized tank has grown to what Armourgeddon is today. We run activities for all ages over 8 years old from archery and clay pigeon shooting to air riffles and even hovercrafts and quad bike safaris. We host corporate days for up to 150 people, hen and stag days with advise on accommodation and evening activities locally as well as children’s birthday parties and even host coach parties wishing to visit the museum.

Who’d have thought all that could come from watching one movie?!

This winter we have been completely redeveloping the museum on site with some extra space and even a Parisian street café complete with military vehicle convoy driving past. More on the café and the museum next week.

For now, we leave you with a tiny taste of fate. On that night when both Tracy and Stuart independently drove their new cars to the same pub in Nuneaton, history was repeating itself. Both their sets of parents had also met in Nuneaton, at a Co-Op Hall dance many years before. Stuart’s Dad stuck to the farm though, still managing much of the livestock today. Makes you wonder what the attraction to a night out in Nuneaton from South Leicestershire may be?! I think a staff night out is in order to find out….