The raising of Henry VIII’s flagship the Mary Rose was one of the most complex and expensive maritime salvage projects in history and the surviving section of the ship and thousands of recovered artefacts are of great value as a Tudor period time capsule. Today the museum which houses her, rebuilt in 2013, is one of the foremost visitor attractions on the south coast and forms the centrepiece of this new tour which takes in a series of properties associated with the great Tudor age.

We begin at Hampton Court Palace, which became one of Henry VIII’s most favoured residences and is home to the last medieval great hall built for the English monarchy. We then visit the Historic Dockyard in Portsmouth, home to the Mary Rose Museum, where we have a private talk on how the life of the Mary Rose and the tumultuous reign of King Henry VIII were intertwined, followed by a guided tour of the museum, and in the afternoon we visit the Tudor House and Garden in Southampton. We take a trip along the south coast with visits to Henry VIII’s fourth wife Anne of Cleve’s house in Lewes; Arundel Castle and its distinguished Tudor connections and the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum. Finally we visit the great 16^th century ‘powerhouse’ The Vyne, completing our Tudor tale.