Mary Rose Trust submits new bid to Heritage Lottery Fund
News release issued: 28th June 2007Staff from the Mary Rose Trust have completed their detailed work on a bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for a major grant of £21 million to complete the conservation of the ship and her contents, and to build a new museum to house them. The application was delivered to the HLF at the end of June.
The bid is the result of a huge amount of work which went back to the basics of why the Mary Rose is so significant and what it is the Trust must do to display the ship and its collection to the full advantage of the public.
Since the disappointing news a year ago that their earlier bid did not fully satisfy the HLF Trustees, the Mary Rose team have heeded all the constructive advice they have received from the HLF and have considerably improved the planned exhibition and enlarged the learning facilities that will be at the heart of the Trust’s activities. The vision has been refined and is now: ‘To create a sensational and sustainable museum in which the Mary Rose and her artefacts tell their unique stories’. The Trust firmly believes that the resulting plans are exceptionally exciting.
The design of the museum building, to be built over the dry dock in which the ship sits, remains largely the same as before, but the concept for interpretation of the exhibition has changed considerably.
The display will be based on the moment-in-time just before the ship sank in 1545. This unique time-capsule will show some 14,000 stunning objects close to the position where they were found in the ship. They will be displayed to tell the stories of the individuals who owned them; the admiral, the sailor, the cook, the pilot, the barber surgeon, the archer, the carpenter. Their personal and professional belongings will be brought together for the first time for us to understand how they lived and worked onboard. As the eminent Tudor historian, Dr David Starkey recently said: “The Mary Rose is the English Pompeii, preserved by water not fire. All Tudor life is there; it is like stepping inside a Holbein painting”.
The new museum is at the forefront of the plans to improve Portsmouth Historic Dockyard (PHD) as a large visitor attraction. The Historic Dockyard already attracts around half a million visitors a year to its celebrated collection of historic ships and museums including HMS Victory, HMS Warrior 1860 and the Royal Naval Museum. It is expected that not only will this number increase but new audiences will come for the first time. Much work has been done to research how this can be achieved and the new museum will engage with members of the local community far more closely.
Learning and education is at the heart of the Mary Rose Trust’s activities and all ages will be catered for. The space for accommodating schools and groups will be quadrupled to meet the ever-growing demand to join the highly popular programmes that cover both heritage and science. At long last the Trust will have the necessary facilities to look after their visitors.
The overall project covers the completion of the conservation, the building and fitting out of the museum, the repair of the dry dock and the landscaping of the arena between HMS Victory and the museum. It will cost £35 million and building work is expected to commence in 2009. The aim is to open the new museum by the end of 2011, which is the 500th anniversary of the ship’s maiden voyage.
John Lippiett, the Chief Executive of the Trust said: “We have been working very closely with the Heritage Lottery Fund over the last year to address all the issues they raised last time. We are confident we have a first class bid that will provide a museum of national and international importance. Furthermore, the end of the conservation programme will at last be reached.”
The HLF is currently assisting the funding of the second phase of conservation and has contributed to both research and the costs of the preparation of this new bid. John Lippiett added: “Without HLF support in the past, there would be no Mary Rose today. We receive no core government funding so we are very dependent on this fund. The new museum will make the Trust fully self-sustaining, so it is vital that we complete our project in this timescale”.
The Mary Rose Trust will hear in mid January 2008 whether or not the first stage pass has been approved by HLF Trustees. They will then have a year to develop the plans still further before final approval is forthcoming. Meanwhile the Trust is pressing ahead with its plans to raise £14 million as its expected share of the costs.
