Newport’s medieval ship to stay in storage as council baulks at £27.5m exhibition cost

Nicholas Thomas, Local Democracy Reporter

Newport’s 15th-century ship will remain in a warehouse after council leaders said they could not afford a permanent exhibition centre that could cost up to £27.5m.

Cabinet members recognised the ship’s “national and international significance” but agreed on Wednesday, 11 November, that keeping it in storage, at a cost of around £115,000, offered the best value for now.

The ship was discovered buried in the banks of the River Usk in 2002 during construction of the Riverfront Theatre. Specialists have since restored its timbers, which are being kept in a Newport warehouse while the council looks for a permanent home.

Cllr Emma Stowell-Corten, the cabinet member for culture, called investment in a new home for the ship a “huge capital commitment for the council – and one which is not affordable”.

She told cabinet colleagues there was “no funding available which could meet the level… required”, including from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, which has already committed to improvements at the city’s Transporter Bridge.

Cllr Stowell-Corten said she was “absolutely” against handing the ship to another organisation because she feared it could be taken out of Newport and displayed elsewhere.

Keeping it in storage for the foreseeable future “preserves flexibility” if new opportunities arise, she said.

“This is not filing the ship away – we will continue to seek potential sites and partnerships,” she added.

When the proposal was published in a cabinet report last week, council opposition leader Cllr Matthew Evans told the Local Democracy Reporting Service he was disappointed and felt the ship’s future had been “kicked into the long grass again”.

At the cabinet meeting, Cllr James Clarke rejected suggestions the storage decision lacked ambition and challenged critics to come forward with ideas for the ship’s future. He said Labour cabinet members “want this to succeed as much as anybody else”.

Council leader Cllr Dimitri Batrouni said he expected “everybody wants to see the ship displayed”, but the cost of a new home had to be weighed against other projects, including new schools and a replacement bridge in Bassaleg.