The Hovercraft Museum, in

Lee-on-the-Solent Lee-on-the-Solent, often referred to as Lee-on-Solent, is a seaside district of the Borough of Gosport in Hampshire, England, about five miles (8 km) west of Portsmouth. The area is located on the coast of the Solent. It is primarily a resi ...

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties of England, county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English citi ...

, England is a museum run by a

registered charity A charitable organization or charity is an organization whose primary objectives are philanthropy and social well-being (e.g. educational, religious or other activities serving the public interest or common good). The legal definition of a ch ...

dedicated to

hovercraft A hovercraft, also known as an air-cushion vehicle or ACV, is an amphibious Craft (vehicle), craft capable of travelling over land, water, mud, ice, and other surfaces. Hovercraft use blowers to produce a large volume of air below the hull ...

. The museum has a collection of over 60 hovercraft of various designs. Situated at HMS ''Daedalus'' by the large slipway from where many hovercraft have been tested, the museum collection includes SR.N5 and

SR.N6 The Saunders-Roe (later British Hovercraft Corporation) SR.N6 hovercraft (also known as the ''Winchester'' class) was essentially a larger version of the earlier SR.N5 series. It incorporated several features that resulted in the type becoming ...

hovercraft. The collection also contains the last remaining

SR.N4 The SR.N4 (Saunders-Roe Nautical 4) hovercraft (also known as the ''Mountbatten'' class hovercraft) was a combined passenger and vehicle-carrying class of hovercraft. The type has the distinction of being the largest civil hovercraft to have ...

craft, the world's largest civil hovercraft, which has been laid up in Lee-on-the-Solent since cross-Channel services ceased on 1 October 2000. The museum houses the world's largest library of documents, publications, film, video, photographs and drawings on hovercraft, all of which is available for research by prior arrangement. A number of hovercraft manufacturers have deposited their complete archives with the museum for safekeeping, thus swelling this important repository of information. The museum also contains a large collection of original manufacturers' hovercraft models including the world's first working hovercraft model built by

Christopher Cockerell Sir Christopher Sydney Cockerell CBE RDI FRS (4 June 1910 – 1 June 1999) was an English engineer, best known as the inventor of the hovercraft. Early life and education Cockerell was born in Cambridge, where his father, Sir Sydney Cocker ...

. The museum reopened in January 2016 after being closed for essential structural building work over nearly two years. Shortly afterwards the remaining

craft came under threat of scrapping when the site owners, the

Homes and Communities Agency Homes England is the non-departmental public body that funds new affordable housing in England. It was founded on 1 January 2018 to replace the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA). HCA in turn was established by the Housing and Regeneration Act 2 ...

, proposed the redevelopment of the land. The museum trust started a petition calling for one of the craft to be preserved.

Notes and references

External links

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Pictures of Hovershow, 2004Pictures of Hovershow. 2005Pictures of Hovershow. 2006The Hovercraft Museum and the Daedlus Slipway Intrigue 4K
{{Authority control

Museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

Museums in Hampshire Maritime museums in England Gosport 1988 establishments in England