A bid for lottery money to help fund the £23m new museum planned to showcase the Mary Rose in Portsmouth has been turned down by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).
The Mary Rose Trust, which had applied for £13.5m towards its scheme to reunite the objects from the Mary Rose with the ship’s hull and give it a permanent home, was told that the project, in its current form, was not considered capable of delivering it’s vision for a world class museum.
However, a spokesperson for the HLF said: “The Mary Rose is one of the most important pieces of our nation’s heritage and the trust rightly considers that such a treasure deserves a truly world-class museum to tell the story effectively.
“We have been a huge supporter of the Mary Rose in the past, awarding nine grants of more than £5.6m and we hope to work with the trust to realise its ambitions in the future.”
John Lippiett, chief executive of the Mary Rose Trust said: “The trust looks forward to receiving more details from the HLF regarding its concerns with the bid before seeking ways to amend the plans to build a world class museum.
“We are confident that further support from the HLF should still be available for a future bid and are warmed by the HLF's public recognition that Mary Rose is one of the most important pieces of the nation's heritage.”
He added that the decision to withhold funding at present would inevitably cause delays and add to costs, and that the trust would be investigating alternative sources of finance: “We are always seeking to examine every possible route of funding, so no sources are ever ignored,” he said.
“The trustees will meet in a few weeks time to discuss the options. Unless a private donor is immediately forthcoming, there are bound to be delays, perhaps of some 18 months, before we can regain the momentum.
“There are obviously extra costs attached to this process which will themselves be hard to absorb and the overall costs could escalate. Nonetheless, the combined museum appears to be the only way in which to make the Mary Rose Trust self-sufficient. This is seen as a squall on our final voyage, but we should not be blown too far off track.”
The planned museum, designed by Wilkinson Eyre, would see a wooden-clad oval building cover the dry dock in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard in which the Mary Rose is currently being conserved. Three levels of galleries would be then built around the ship to tell its story. Building work was originally scheduled to begin in 2008 and the museum opened to the public in 2011. Details: www.historicdockyard.co.uk
