Mary Rose Museum

Gifford is working closely with the client and project team on the development of this new museum which received a £21 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund in January 2008. It will provide a world class experience in which to view the Tudor warship and its artefacts.

The first warship to be built in England, the Mary Rose sank in the Solent during the reign of Henry VIII and was famously raised before a worldwide television audience of 60 million in 1982. Since then the ship’s hull has been housed in a temporary museum where it has only been possible to display 6% of its 19,000 artefacts.

The Mary Rose Museum will incorporate both the conserved hull and a virtual hull which will act as its mirror image and offer both a viewing platform for the conserved section and a display gallery for artefacts. Additional galleries and an ‘immersive theatre’ will also be provided to complete the whole Tudor experience.

There are a number of important aspects to the development of the new museum. The first is the reliable continuation of the hull’s conservation during the construction of the new facilities. The second is the creation of a museum which will provide a high-quality environment to both protect the priceless artefacts and ensure comfortable conditions for visitors.  his will be achieved by the creation of two of the world’s largest display cases in which internal conditions will be controlled to very close environmental criteria using, wherever possible, low energy techniques to minimise operational costs in the future.

The archaeological sensitivity of the dry dock which is a scheduled ancient monument has also to be considered.  The new museum’s structure will span across the dry dock to four points outside this monument to minimise impact on the existing historic fabric.

Computational modelling has been extensively used to design both the bridging structure and the control of the internal environment during the various conservation and construction stages. Of particular note is the work associated with the air drying phase when conditioned air will be distributed in a tightly controlled manner across the hull, decks and individual timbers to dry out the moisture absorbed during the spray phase of the conservation.

Also of note is the very detailed design co-ordination work associated with the construction sequence which will be necessary to modify the existing buildings to facilitate construction of the new museum.

Gifford is responsible for the detailed design of the mechanical and electrical services for both the conservation work and the new museum building. We are also responsible for the civil and structural engineering design of the new museum building, plus environmental, flood, heritage and transport input to the planning process and building regulation consents.