1 March 2010

Rare artefacts go on display for the first time

Thorneycroft seaplane lighter under restoration at the Fleet Air Arm Museum

Just across the road from the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton in Somerset, is the museum’s Reserve Collection. The Reserve Collection is larger than many other entire aircraft museums and is housed in a Heritage Lottery funded climate-controlled building called Cobham Hall.

Cobham Hall opens to the public twice each year when it attracts visitors from all over the UK to see its unique collection of aircraft records and artefacts, many of which have never before been seen on public display.

The first of the 2010 public openings will be on Sunday 25th April.

Within Cobham Hall there are over thirty historic aircraft and some five miles of shelving accommodating many of the museum's 2 million records and 30 thousand artefacts.

In addition to the aircraft on display in the main hangar, there will be an opportunity to attend a series of guided tours of the Fleet Air Arm Museum’s Documents Store and Small Objects Store.

Cobham Hall houses one of the largest collections of Westland Helicopters including a Whirlwind and a Wasp, and the Gazelle helicopter in which HRH The Duke of York learnt to fly...other aircraft include a de Havilland Sea Vixen and the first swept wing jet aircraft to land on an aircraft carrier, a Supermarine 510.

Cobham Hall also houses the world's oldest surviving aircraft carrier, the 1918 Thorneycroft seaplane lighter. The Lighter T3 which is on the National Register of Historic Vessels. It is sixty feet long and was towed behind fast RN destroyers, allowing aircraft to take off at sea during World War 1.

If you haven’t seen the Museum’s extensive Reserve Collection, don’t miss this rare opportunity. Cobham Hall will be open from 10.00am - 4.00pm on Sunday 25th April.

For further information contact Jon Jefferies, Head of Marketing 01935 842638 or go to: www.fleetairarm.com