All on the Beaulieu (Bowloo) estate … nice to be one of the landed nobility …

The National Motor Museum

I don’t know that it’s particularly national – it’s a private museum – but it does have a very nice, quite large, and moderately comprehensive collection of cars … I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

The SOE Museum

Several of the properties on the estate were used to train SOE Agents during WW2 and there is a small museum dedicated to them …

Buckler’s Hard

It’s hard to believe it, but this small estuarial site just across the bay from Portsmouth once built men-o’war for the Royal Navy with nothing more than the simple slipways shown below – building forty three over a century or so, including three which fought at Trafalgar!

During WW2 the site was reactivated and used to build Motor Torpedo Boats (and, yes, it’s on land belonging to the Beaulieu estate!)

Beaulieu

It’s a moderately sized stately home, what more needs to be said? Except that it was originally the Gate House for the Abbey of Beaulieu which was dissolved and sold by Henry VIII for a tidy sum. Now much expanded over the years since, of course,