Going greener at the Mary Rose

At the end of 2023, the conservation laboratories at the Mary Rose Museum were awarded the gold award for LEAF (Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework) in recognition of the conservation team’s work to improve sustainability. The team worked for several months to improve the sustainability of the labs, making changes to reuse and recycle equipment and materials, find sustainable conservation products, reduce the labs’ carbon footprint and starting to build sustainability into all new exhibitions and projects.

It’s not just the labs that are becoming more sustainable! The hull of the Mary Rose is kept in a very carefully controlled environment. If you have visited the museum, you may have noticed the air lock doors when you enter the ship hall; the room where the hull is. The air lock means conditioned air is kept inside when visitors enter and exit. It is kept at around 20°C and a stable, constant humidity. You can imagine, when the air outside the museum is hot, cold, damp or dry, the system has to work hard to condition the environment and this uses a lot of energy and contributes to the museum’s carbon footprint. The conservation and maintenance teams have been working to reduce this by adjusting the settings on the air conditioning systems. One of these changes was to the fans that push the air around the system, we have reduced the speed that these operate at saving lots of energy but keeping the conditions in the ship hall the same.