Shipwreck Centre and Maritime Museum

What it’s like

Cabinets full of gold coins, cannon and diving gear pulled from real shipwrecks, tucked inside a craft village near Newport.

This one's a proper cabinet-of-curiosities museum, built around thousands of relics hauled up from shipwrecks around the Isle of Wight. There's Spanish gold, bits salvaged from galleons and steamships, even wreckage from wartime submarines. Kids who like a good pirate or smuggling story will find plenty here, and the antique diving equipment on display is the sort of thing that gets a "whoa" out of most children, all clunky brass helmets and thick glass.

It's small enough that you won't need a whole day, but dense enough that you'll want a good hour or two to actually read the stories behind the objects rather than just glance and move on. Tickets are £7 for an adult and £3 for a child, or £18 for a family, and under-fives go in free. That's not bad value for a museum with this much packed into it.

It sits inside Arreton Barns Craft Village, on the A3056 between Newport and Sandown, so you can wander the other craft shops before or after. Parking's free at the main car park or the overflow, which takes the sting out of the entry price. Just don't turn up in winter, it's only open April 1st to November 1st, daily from 10am to 5pm, with last entry an hour before closing at 4:30pm.

If you fancy cycling there, it's on the Havenstreet Steam Cycle route, and it's under an hour's ride from the Red Funnel ferry in East Cowes if you follow National Cycle Route 23. Worth knowing if you're staying nearby and fancy making a day of it on two wheels rather than four.

Facilities

Need to know

Last entry

4:30pm (last entry, an hour before closing)

Parking

Free parking at main centre car park and overflow car parks

Worth knowing

Children under 5 go free

• Closed from November 1st through to the end of March, so it's a spring and summer visit only
• Last entry is an hour before closing at 4:30pm
• It's a stop on the Havenstreet Steam Cycle route if you fancy arriving by bike
• The museum sits inside a wider craft village, so there's more to browse once you're done

Plan your visit

Featured in 2 Huddlepin lists

See all Museums in Southampton · Things to do in Southampton