East Suffolk Council
New season at Landguard Fort
Landguard Fort opens to the public on 23 March with upgraded displays and interactive exhibits.
As one of Felixstowe’s premier visitor attractions, with an 18 percent increase in visitor numbers in 2019, the fort is progressively upgrading the quality of its historical interpretations of life and activities of the past.
General Manager Nicola Barker states:
“We’re making our displays more and more interactive to stimulate the senses and give hands-on-fun. Our 1940s de-contamination showers let you sniff the smell of different poison gases although of course they’re not the real stuff.
We’ve put in new displays for our monster 38-ton Victorian gun and provided new visitor-operated sound tracks of what it sounded like being loaded and fired.”
Other exhibits look at how the military communicated in the past. Visitors can try sending messages to each other using semaphore flags. Or test their skills at sending and receiving Morse code in our Cold War secret defence headquarters.
As before, visitors can watch our popular and engrossing film of the re-enactment of the Dutch invasion of 1667, and enjoy refreshments in our 1940s tea room.
Steve Curtis is a trustee and chair of the Fort Forward management team that has been developing a five-year strategic plan with support and advice from English Heritage.He says:
“We now have a clear plan going forward as to exactly what we want to achieve, by when and how we fund it. We’re fortunate to have a great team of volunteers with professional experience from IT and communications technologies to project management, design, accountancy, construction and fitting out.
Our tour guides and ticket office and shop staff do an excellent job ensuring our visitors enjoy their visit and give us the feedback we need so we can keep improving.”
Entry is great value for families at just £5.50 adults, £2.50 children 5-15 years, concessions £4.50, and children under 5 and English Heritage members FREE.