Tudor-inspired crafting workshops where visitors recreate the Cowdray Engraving of the Battle of the Solent, held on Wednesdays and Fridays.
Create Your Own Cowdray opens at the Mary Rose Museum on Wednesday 29 July, and it's a bit different from your usual museum visit. It's a series of Tudor-inspired crafting workshops that run every Wednesday and Friday from 11:00am to 3:00pm, and the whole thing is built around the Cowdray engraving.
If you're not familiar with it, the Cowdray engraving is a famous image of the Battle of the Solent in 1545 — the very naval engagement in which the Mary Rose was lost. The workshops let you work on a specially designed version of that engraving, and the clever bit is that each week focuses on a different part of the scene. One week it's a flag bearer; another, the Mary Rose herself; then Henry VIII, the English Army encampment, and Southsea Castle. It's not a one-and-done thing, so if you're into it, you can come back and piece the whole scene together over time.
The workshops are part of the museum's celebration of Portsmouth's centennial year, and they keep the focus on the Tudor world and the history that brought the ship to the bottom of the Solent in the first place. It's a slow way of getting into the story, one detail at a time, rather than just reading a plaque and moving on.
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Practical side: the workshops run Wednesdays and Fridays from 29 July, 11:00am to 3:00pm, and they're free with a valid museum ticket. If you're planning on coming back multiple times to work through the different weeks, an Ultimate Explorer ticket is the way to go. You'll find it all at the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth.
