TV stars back £2.5m Royal Marines exhibition appeal

TV personalities Ross Kemp and Dan Snow have helped to launch a £2.5m appeal to raise "final" funding for a new Royal Marines exhibition which is due to open this summer.

The Royal Marines Experience at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard will replace the city's former Royal Marines Museum which closed in 2017.

The new exhibit was previously scheduled to open in 2019 and has seen estimated costs rise from £10m to about £15m.

In May 2025, the project was awarded £4.4m of lottery funding, after a previous £13m lottery bid was refused.

Historian Snow said: "The Royal Marines are woven through over 360 years of British history, from the age of sail to the present day.

"The Royal Marines Experience will safeguard that living history and share it with the public in a powerful, modern way."

Actor Kemp, who shadowed Royal Marines in Afghanistan from 2007 to 2012 for a TV series, said: "I've been with Royal Marines on the ground, and you see it up close, the discipline, the humour, the calm under pressure, and the fierce loyalty to the person beside them.

"The Royal Marines Experience matters because it captures that truth, not as myth, but in the voices of the people who lived it."

The former Royal Marines Museum closed in 2017 due to the "irreversible deterioration" of its previous home at Eastney Barracks.

The new exhibition, replacing the previous Action Stations Commando Experience at the dockyard's Boathouse 6, includes interactive experiences and a remembrance room for those who gave their lives.

Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, the base for the National Museum of the Royal Navy (NMRN), is already home to several naval attractions, including HMS Victory, The Mary Rose and HMS Warrior.

Additional funding for the exhibit has come from the Garfield Weston Foundation, NMRN reserves and private donations.