Re-Engineering Brooklands Phase One
February 2015
In February 2015, Brooklands Museum received a confirmed grant of £4.681million from HLF for its ‘Brooklands Aircraft Factory & Race Track Revival Project’. The project will transform the Museum’s Grade II listed Second World War Wellington Hangar into ‘The Brooklands Aircraft Factory’; build a new annexe (the ‘Flight Shed’) to house more of the Museum’s outstanding collection of historic aircraft; and restore the Finishing Straight of the Brooklands Race Track, the world’s first purpose-built motor-racing circuit.
The project aims to inspire current and future generations to embrace science, technology and engineering, and will include a training scheme for volunteers in historic aircraft restoration and a raft of new activities on the Race Track. Work is due to start in the next couple of months with completion of the Aircraft Factory and Flight Shed experiences due in the Autumn of 2016.
Project update - February 2016
Specialist groundworks contractors JCMES have been preparing the site for the relocated Hangar and Flight Shed since October and are due to finish on site shortly. The main contract for the dismantling, restoration and re-erection of the Hangar, construction of the new Flight Shed and restoration of the Finishing Straight has been awarded to Brymor Construction and they will be starting soon. This part of the works will take just over a year and will be followed by the exhibition fit-out, with the project due to open late Summer 2017.
Project update - March 2016
Brooklands Museum took a major step forward in its ground-breaking Re-Engineering Brooklands redevelopment programme with the announcement in last week’s Budget of a £1million grant from the Government.
Project update - Summer 2016
The new Flight Shed building is nearing completion and we are now preparing for the next stage of the project. On the 31st August the Wellington Hangar will open for the final time in its current form. So, if you would like to experience the current exhibition one last time, make sure you schedule in a visit this August.
Read the full Summer UpdateProject update - September 2016
The Wellington Hangar is now closed to visitors but the Vickers Wellington and the Vickers Vimy are on display in temporary pavilions near Concorde. Some of our smaller aircraft will not be back on display until late summer 2017, when the new displays open (please see below for full details). However, our other aircraft, including Concorde and all of the airliners in the Vickers Aircraft Park, are open as usual as are all of our motoring displays and the London Bus Museum. Our contractors will be carefully dismantling the Hangar from October and it will be sent off site for restoration, returning early next year to be reconstructed on its new site south of the Flight Shed.
Project Update - Phase One complete
With the handover of the Flight Shed, and the removal of all exhibits from the Wellington Hangar, we can now declare Phase One of the Brooklands Aircraft Factory & Race Track Revival Project complete.
If you have been unable to visit and see the transformation of the site first-hand, then you will enjoy our stop-motion capture of the preparation and assembly of the new Flight Shed building.
With the completion of the Flight Shed we have also moved on to Phase Two of the project: the dismantling, restoration and rebuilding of the Wellington Hangar and the restoration of the Finishing Straight of the Race Track.
