The dates are set for the June Open Days of 2018. Gates open 11am to 4pm on both Saturday and Sunday We have steam vessel VIC56 visiting us over the weekend, coming up from Chatham, under steam. She is a "Victualling Inshore Craft" built in 1945 in Faversham Kent, as part of the war [...]
The first Open Days of 2018 will be taking place this weekend. Gates open 11am to 4pm on both Saturday and Sunday We have motor tug Touchstone arriving from Chatham and open to visitors, a pop-up cafe in the pier house and of course the resident live-aboard boats to view close up, mainly Dutch and [...]
The September Open Days at Hermitage are scheduled to coincide with Open House weekend in London. Gates open 11am to 4pm on both Saturday and Sunday We have two historic vessels visiting for the weekend, fireboat Massey Shaw and steam tug Portwey, shown here at Hermitage, both twin-scew configurations, one diesel powered the other coal [...]
Gates open 11am to 4pm on both Saturday and Sunday We have one visiting vessel (TSB Centaur, see below) coming to Hermitage and open to visitors, a pop-up cafe in the pier house and of course the resident live-aboard boats to view close up, mainly Dutch and English river barges, and all in navigable condition [...]
The first Open Days of 2017 will be taking place soon. Gates open 11am to 4pm on both Saturday and Sunday We have motor tug Touchstone arriving from Chatham and open to visitors, a pop-up cafe in the pier house and of course the resident live-aboard boats to view close up, mainly Dutch and English [...]
The September Open Days at Hermitage are scheduled to coincide with Open House weekend in London. We have two historic vessels visiting for the weekend, steam tug Portwey and fireboat Massey Shaw. Steam tug Portwey is a twin-screw coal-fired vessel built in 1927 and of dimensions 24.4m x 5.94m x 2.74m draft. She was built [...]
The first Open Days of the year are taking place this weekend. Gates open 11am to 4pm on both Saturday and Sunday We have motor tug Touchstone arriving from Chatham and open to visitors, a pop-up cafe in the pier house and of course the resident live-aboard boats to look at, mainly Dutch and English [...]
This weekend is co-ordinated with the Open House London event, which showcases interesting buildings and architecture around London not usually open to the public. In this case, the floating pier house and the moorings of a community of live-aboard barges. http://events.londonopenhouse.org/building/17890 There will be a cafe with refreshments in the pier house, and archaelogy artefacts [...]
Each boat has a plaque explaining its history (most of them are around 100 years old), and residents are around to answer questions about living onboard. Don’t be shy with the questions, we’ve heard most of them before….Do you have electricity/internet/TV? Does it move? Why did you decide to move onto a boat? [...]
Hermitage had two interesting historic vessels coming up the Thames to be here and open to visitors. The Thames sailing barge "Will" (built 1925, steel) and Tug "Touchstone" (built 1962). All the resident vessels were here as usual, with information panels explaining their histories. The cafe in the pier house proved popular as usual. Another [...]
