Helen Bonsor-Wilton is the CEO of the Mary Rose Trust. The Trust has just reopened the Mary Rose Museum following a £5.4m redevelopment.
The redevelopment was not without its challenges, but has led to an enhanced visitor experience and an increased number of artefacts and new displays.
The Mary Rose is the only 16th-century warship on display anywhere in the world. Every object in the museum has been raised from the seabed and conserved.
What can visitors now see at the Mary Rose?
The Mary Rose Museum at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard has just reopened after a period of redevelopment and there have been many notable changes made to the display.
When the museum opened in 2013 it was the first time the ship was displayed together with her collection of artefacts positioned directly opposite their original location on the ship. In the redeveloped museum we have continued this approach, but we have added some recently researched, exciting items to it.
In 2013 we were still drying the Mary Rose so she was surrounded by an insulated layer, meaning she was only visible through small portholes. Now visitors have panoramic views of the ship from all nine galleries through floor-to-ceiling glazing on the lower and main decks.
On the upper deck visitors enter the Weston Ship Hall via an airlock and are separated from the ship only by a glass balcony so they can breathe the same air as Henry VIII’s flagship.
The immersive style of presentation gives you a strong sense of what life on board must have been like, with the visitor route curving down in line with the bowing of the decks, ambient sound effects of the ship creaking and the ship’s bell ringing to sound the change of watch.
The new display helps visitors imagine life on board with the 500 crew members through the introduction of innovative projections. These give an exciting insight of the crew on board, going about their everyday business, in peacetime and at war.
Why has it been so important to carry out this work?
This work has finally revealed the ship in all her glory, after 34 years of conservation work; 12 years of spraying with chilled water to remove salt, 19 years of spraying with a soluble wax to stabilise her structure, and three years of drying that removed 100 tons of water.
This is the culmination of the vision of our founders, Alexander McKee and Margaret Rule, to display the Mary Rose and her collection for all time in Portsmouth – this is precisely where she is now, in the Mary Rose Museum at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
As the Mary Rose sank mid-battle with the personal and professional effects of 500 men, what remains provides a unique time capsule of Tudor life. Artefacts range from the everyday such as shoes and boots, dice, backgammon boards and fish bones, as well as guns and longbows, carpentry and medical implements, all of which have greatly enhanced our understanding of life in the reign of Henry VIII.
The Mary Rose is described by the historian David Starkey as "England’s Pompeii, Herculaneum and King Tutankhamun’s tomb all rolled into one… nowhere else in the world are there as many artefacts of Tudor life".
Have there been any challenges along the way?
Just a few! To conserve and look after a Tudor ship complete with artefacts requires a constant level of relative humidity and temperature. This has been a major challenge particularly when the museum was built over the old structure in 2013. It continued to be challenging as we removed the original structure this year.
To ensure that all of this was completed without incident we had to keep close management of risk and work closely with Como, who were the appointed contractors on the project. None of this would have been possible without the continued generous support of private donors and the Heritage Lottery Fund.
What’s next for the Mary Rose?
The Mary Rose has now dried but her timbers have shrunk, so we need to monitor any movement and come up with a solution to support her decks for the future. We also need to start the process of cleaning the deposits of chemical wax off the ship to improve her appearance.
For our next big project we plan to reveal the starboard side of the ship. To do this we will need to build walkways for visitors to walk the length of Mary Rose. This is the next exciting step in the Mary Rose story, and it will allow visitors to see her as Henry VIII would have seen her in 1545.
The redevelopment was not without its challenges, but has led to an enhanced visitor experience and an increased number of artefacts and new displays.
The Mary Rose is the only 16th-century warship on display anywhere in the world. Every object in the museum has been raised from the seabed and conserved.
What can visitors now see at the Mary Rose?
The Mary Rose Museum at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard has just reopened after a period of redevelopment and there have been many notable changes made to the display.
When the museum opened in 2013 it was the first time the ship was displayed together with her collection of artefacts positioned directly opposite their original location on the ship. In the redeveloped museum we have continued this approach, but we have added some recently researched, exciting items to it.
In 2013 we were still drying the Mary Rose so she was surrounded by an insulated layer, meaning she was only visible through small portholes. Now visitors have panoramic views of the ship from all nine galleries through floor-to-ceiling glazing on the lower and main decks.
On the upper deck visitors enter the Weston Ship Hall via an airlock and are separated from the ship only by a glass balcony so they can breathe the same air as Henry VIII’s flagship.
The immersive style of presentation gives you a strong sense of what life on board must have been like, with the visitor route curving down in line with the bowing of the decks, ambient sound effects of the ship creaking and the ship’s bell ringing to sound the change of watch.
The new display helps visitors imagine life on board with the 500 crew members through the introduction of innovative projections. These give an exciting insight of the crew on board, going about their everyday business, in peacetime and at war.
Why has it been so important to carry out this work?
This work has finally revealed the ship in all her glory, after 34 years of conservation work; 12 years of spraying with chilled water to remove salt, 19 years of spraying with a soluble wax to stabilise her structure, and three years of drying that removed 100 tons of water.
This is the culmination of the vision of our founders, Alexander McKee and Margaret Rule, to display the Mary Rose and her collection for all time in Portsmouth – this is precisely where she is now, in the Mary Rose Museum at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
As the Mary Rose sank mid-battle with the personal and professional effects of 500 men, what remains provides a unique time capsule of Tudor life. Artefacts range from the everyday such as shoes and boots, dice, backgammon boards and fish bones, as well as guns and longbows, carpentry and medical implements, all of which have greatly enhanced our understanding of life in the reign of Henry VIII.
The Mary Rose is described by the historian David Starkey as "England’s Pompeii, Herculaneum and King Tutankhamun’s tomb all rolled into one… nowhere else in the world are there as many artefacts of Tudor life".
Have there been any challenges along the way?
Just a few! To conserve and look after a Tudor ship complete with artefacts requires a constant level of relative humidity and temperature. This has been a major challenge particularly when the museum was built over the old structure in 2013. It continued to be challenging as we removed the original structure this year.
To ensure that all of this was completed without incident we had to keep close management of risk and work closely with Como, who were the appointed contractors on the project. None of this would have been possible without the continued generous support of private donors and the Heritage Lottery Fund.
What’s next for the Mary Rose?
The Mary Rose has now dried but her timbers have shrunk, so we need to monitor any movement and come up with a solution to support her decks for the future. We also need to start the process of cleaning the deposits of chemical wax off the ship to improve her appearance.
For our next big project we plan to reveal the starboard side of the ship. To do this we will need to build walkways for visitors to walk the length of Mary Rose. This is the next exciting step in the Mary Rose story, and it will allow visitors to see her as Henry VIII would have seen her in 1545.
