Happy birthday, Mary Rose!

Associated media

Saturday (31 May) marks the first birthday of the multi-award winning Mary Rose Museum – currently shortlisted for the Art Fund Museum of the Year 2014. 

The Museum opened a year ago, revealing the ambitious heritage construction project of the new Mary Rose Museum at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard to the UK public. On its first birthday the Museum anticipates a projected number of 470,000 visitors since opening. 

The Mary Rose has been described by historian Dr David Starkey as ‘this country's Pompeii, painting the finest picture of the world of sixteenth-century life’. The Mary Rose is known internationally, and the new museum attracts visitors from all over the world and provides a learning programme to inspire children, students and community groups of all ages and abilities.

Local resident Barry Reah is a costumed interpreter at the Mary Rose Museum; he joined as a volunteer soon after it opened. Since then he has met the Duke of Edinburgh and The Duke and Duchess of Cornwall, and said:

My wife and I came to visit the Mary Rose a month after the new museum opened. I was completely captured by the atmosphere of the place and now I’m retired, it inspired me to become a volunteer in my spare time. My Tudor costume is a real ice-breaker and I’ve met so many people, including Royalty! It’s a great feeling to be part of the team celebrating the museums first birthday!