2009 start for Mary Rose museum build

Portsmouth City Council has granted planning permission for the £35 million building, which will be constructed around the dock in which the Mary Rose's hull currently sits under enclosed treatment conditions.

Artefacts from the current museum, which lies some way from the hull near the dockyard's main entrance, will then be moved over so that hull and artefacts are together in an imaginatively designed building, sympathetic to its environment.

Curved and clad in wood like old ship hulls, and painted black in the tradition of English boatsheds, the building will be low enough not to eclipse the nearby HMS Victory.

Inside, walkways corresponding with the ship's three main deck levels will allow clear views of the Mary Rose's preserved starboard side. Galleries, shaped to mimic the ship's missing port side, will hold artefacts set out in the context of their original positions on board.

Further galleries at either end of the ship will hold other artefacts, interpretation materials and hands-on attractions. Many artefacts will be going on view for the first time, because, in the much smaller current museum, just 6 per cent of some 19,000 items raised from the ship's Solent wreck site are displayed.

Funding is well advanced. For construction to start in September, £31 million of the £35 million total has to be raised by June. The Heritage Lottery Fund has given £21 million and the Mary Rose Trust has raised £7 million. It is confident of raising the last £3 million by the June deadline.

The hull of the Mary Rose will have to be withdrawn from public view while construction is under way. Upon re-opening in its new environment, it will continue to be wet-treated with polyethylene glycol in its see-through box until 2011, before being gradually dried out to go on open display by 2016.

Illustration: Wilkinson Eyre Architects