A visitor attraction in Swindon has announced an exciting change.
The Science and Innovation Park, in Wroughton, opened to the public in 2024, allowing people to see its collection of over 300,000 objects for the first time.
Two years on, the £65 million project has proven so popular that it has confirmed it has expanded its previously limited guided public tours to seven days a week.
This means that more people will be able to see the eclectic collection that includes the first motorised vehicle to cross Antarctica, an ice cream tricycle that helped win the Second World Wa and a balloon gondola that successfully carried two people into the stratosphere in 1932.
A spokesperson for the Science and Innovation Park: "Guided public tours at the Science and Innovation Park offer a unique behind-the-scenes experience, with small groups invited to explore some of the 300,000 objects cared for in the Hawking Building, a working museum store, on a 90-minute expert-led highlights tour.
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"The tours, which are aimed at an adult audience, cover a wide variety of historical topics across science, technology, engineering and medicine."
The guided public tours will run seven days a week from Monday 2 March, and are now available to book up to 31 July 2026.
Tickets cost £25 for adults and children (7-18), or £20 for local residents (postcode must begin SN1, SN2, SN3, SN4, SN5, SN6, SN8, SN25 or SN26),
Tickets can be purchased through the Science and Innovation Park website: scienceinnovationpark.org.uk
Tickets to these tours must be booked in advance online or over the phone and are not available in person from the Science and Innovation Park.
The Hawking Building at the Science and Innovation Park covers 27,000 square metres and has 30,000 metres of shelving.
It is 90 metres wide and almost 300 meters long - the equivalent to 600 double-decker buses.
Large objects - from cars to fire engines and telescopes to an MRI scanner – are stored on a floor grid made up of 270 squares, each measuring 3.6m x 3.6m. Every square is identified by a letter, number and colour coding system.
The tallest object housed in the Hawking Building is a Glasgow tramcar, built in 1901, standing at five metres tall.
Every one of the 300,000+ objects at the Science and Innovation Park has its own individual barcode, allowing items to be tracked and catalogued with ease.
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