Ogilby’s experience of military life convinced him that the fighting spirit of the British soldier was rooted in the Army’s regimental system and that it was this “esprit de corps alone which held men together in tight corners”. He believed regimental and corps museums were key to preserving the heritage and promoting the traditions that enriched the system and, having joined the Society for Army Historical Research in 1929, he was instrumental in establishing its Museum Committee in 1936. He served as chairman from 1951 until 1960, when he became a vice-president.

In 1954 he endowed a trust for the encouragement, equipment and maintenance of existing regimental and army museums, as well as the fostering of interest in regimental and military tradition; the Trust was named The Army Ogilby Trust. He “steered the Trust through its early days of official, if benign, War Office scepticism” and it came to play a significant part in the establishment and development of 136 regimental and corps museums in Britain.

Colonel Ogilby died on 27th January 1964 at the age of 83. He left bequests to the London Scottish Regiment and the residue of his estate to be held as the Robert Ogilby Trust for general charitable purposes analogous to those of the Army Ogilby Trust. The two Trusts were amalgamated as The Army Museums Ogilby Trust in December 1993. His life-long friend and brother officer Lieutenant General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart described him in his book “Happy Odyssey” as someone “who wastes no sympathy on you when you have no need of it, but stands like the Rock of Gibraltar when you do.”