Tag: March

There is some speggtacular Easter Family Fun at Brooklands this April with an Easter Egg Trail that will keep visitors entertained every day from 30th March – 15th April. During this period visitors will be able to collect their free Trails on arrival, head off around the Museum to solve the hidden clues, and then back to the Shop to claim their FREE chocolate prize.

And there are plenty of other Easter attractions at the Museum to keep visitors absorbed for the rest of their visit once they’ve solved the Trail clues. The Museum’s long-established and hugely popular rides in vintage-style cars and on London Bus Museum’s iconic double-decker buses will also be operating during weekdays from 3rd – 13th April. Car rides take in the challenging summit of Test Hill and the Members’ Banking, the steepest part of the original Race Track, as long as it’s not too wet or slippery. Or, for a more relaxed journey, hop on board a real double-decker bus for a bus trip through the surrounding streets. Car and bus rides will run in the mornings and afternoons with a short break for lunch and are subject to crew and vehicle availability.

The Concorde Experience is a half-hour virtual supersonic ‘flight’ on the Brooklands Concorde and runs every day, but on each weekday from 3rd – 13th April, special Kids Tours will be running twice a day. And don’t forget to look out for the Museum’s larger than life mascot, Bertie Bear, who will be roaming the site looking for fans to have his photograph taken on weekdays 3rd – 13th April. The Brooklands Learning Team will be running two FREE drop-in workshops for youngsters: from 3rd – 6th April they can test how much cargo a paper plane can take while from 9th – 13th April they can have a go at painting their own Pompom Easter Egg to take home.

All of the Museum’s regular displays and exhibitions will be open for families to explore including the new Brooklands Aircraft Factory and Flight Shed. Inside the newly restored Bellman hangar, visitors can ‘clock in’ and don factory workcoats as they begin their ‘Brooklands Apprenticeship’. A series of workshops and interactives explore some of the skills used over the 80-year history of aircraft manufacture at Brooklands. On a new mezzanine level, the story of aviation design at Brooklands is told and visitors can design their own military and civilian aircraft from different eras of aviation including those of the future. Leaving the Factory and entering the new Flight Shed visitors can see some of the Museum’s collection of complete aircraft, including opportunities to sit in the cockpits of the Hawker Hunter and Harrier, as well as displays on radar, ground-to-air radio and pioneering pilots.

The Sunbeam Café is the ideal place for refuelling and add to this a visit to the Museum Shop to pick up a souvenir and you have the recipe for a perfect day out come rain or shine. Normal admission prices apply for Easter and are: adults £13.50, seniors £11.50, children (5-16 yrs) £7, family ticket (2 adults and up to 3 children) £35. The half-hour Concorde Experience is £5 for adults, £3 for children, 4D simulator rides are £4 for adults, £2 for children.

*A minimum donation of £1 per passenger is requested for car and bus rides. The main visitor entrance for the Museum is via Mercedes-Benz World, on Brooklands Drive off Wellington Way between Weybridge and Byfleet.

www.brooklandsmuseum.com

Brooklands Museum in Surrey, operated by an independent charitable trust, joins some of the world’s best known institutions after it was announced yesterday they have been shortlisted for their ambitious Aircraft Factory and Flight Shed project for an annual award. The Museums + Heritage Awards are held as an extension to the annual Museums + Heritage Show which this year is on 16th & 17th May at Olympia in London. It recognises projects of excellence, innovation and ground-breaking initiatives from galleries and visitor attractions across the UK and overseas.

These range from remarkable achievements of national institutions to projects crafted with limited resources and those championing their staff and volunteers who work hard to deliver inspiring visitor experiences. The Permanent Exhibition category, for which Brooklands has qualified, also includes National Army Museum, Ashmolean Museum, London’s Natural History Museum and part of the Science Museum Group, ‘Wonderlab’ amongst its shortlistees. Other categories include Volunteer of the Year, Educational Initiative, Marketing Campaign and Project on a Limited Budget.

The six-year project at Brooklands required extensive planning and fundraising which involved dismantling and restoring a Grade 2 Listed WWII Bellman Hangar, relocating it and reinterpreting it inside as an aircraft factory, restoring and re-profiling the section of original 1907 Race Track where the Hangar once stood and constructing a new purpose-built Flight Shed with archives and storage. The Aircraft Factory opened to the public in November 2017.

The experience is immersive: as soon as visitors enter through the doors of the Factory, they hear the sounds and drink in the authentic atmosphere of a busy factory. They pick up a “clocking in” card, don an overall and try for themselves the skills involved in aircraft manufacture on interactives at several workstations. In the Tinsmiths Shop, for example, they can roll, bend and rivet blanks of metal to make a small aeroplane to take home or see how wing shapes respond in a wind tunnel. Aircraft and their major components are displayed on “assembly lines” running through the factory.

Looking out over the factory floor is a new mezzanine level that tells the story of aircraft design at Brooklands, where visitors explore the challenges and compromises of designing new and future aircraft. From the mezzanine, a walkway leads into the Flight Shed, which houses some of the Museum’s live aircraft as well as radar and radio equipment and a permanent exhibition on pioneering pilots. Visitors can sit in the cockpit of a Harrier, open locker doors and discover the stories of real workers and pilots at the site and find out about the many aviation firsts and records set at Brooklands. Underneath, workshops for training in aviation preservation skills welcome students and other Museum professionals as part of an ongoing learning programme.

The whole experience is enhanced and brought to life by volunteer stewards and demonstrators, some of them former employees of the Brooklands factories (which employed 14,000 people from surrounding towns and villages at their peak). The volunteers share their own reminiscences making every visit unique and which is a highlight for most visitors.

The Awards are judged by a panel of the sector’s leaders and the winners will be announced at the Awards Ceremony on Wednesday May 16th in London.

www.brooklandsmuseum.com