From Rockets to Rowing – The UK’s largest private space memorabilia collection

The genteel surroundings of Henley-on-Thames are more famous for rowing than for space flight, but it’s also the place to go if you want to see a piece of the Space Shuttle, spacesuits, and documents used to plan the moon landings.

That’s because one of the UK’s largest private collections of space memorabilia is currently on display at the River and Rowing Museum.

The collection is mainly made up of lots of documents, but some really special documents at that – from the Apollo 11 landing plans to the very earliest plans for a moon landing and, more recently, the original proposal for a Space Shuttle.

But if you want something more tangible, how about a panel from a Saturn V rocket, a spacesuit, some space gloves, and fragments of spacecraft. Most of the objects are small enough to fit in glass cases, but they also have the largest chunk of space debris to fall to Earth in private ownership – a piece of the Salyut 7 Soviet space station.

One of the smallest things on display is probably one of the most valuable, a tiny amount of moon dust collected in 1971. There can’t be many people to own some of that outside of research labs.

There’s a fragment from a SpaceX rocket that exploded in 2014, and the company owner might be iritated (well, more than usually so) if he saw that the caption card says that he tweets on Twitter.

As a display, it’s a few glass cases, but somehow still manages to evoke the atmosphere of the space race when machines were big and mighty, and astronauts were magnificent heroes.

A gripe about the exhibition is that they’ve focused the spotlight on the glass cases, making it annoyingly difficult at times to see the objects without getting reflections back at you from the lighting.

The Space Vault exhibition is included in visits to the River and Rowing Museum and will be there until the end of June 2025, so you have plenty of time to visit.

The rest of the museum

The space exhibition is only one modest room in a much larger museum. It tells the history of rowing, from ancient times to the modern Olympics, although it is mostly focused on the history of rowing along the Thames.

Upstairs, two very large rooms are filled with everything from trophies, medals, historic rowing boats, and display boards telling the story of rowing.

There’s the original letter that sparked the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, lots about Olympic rowing, and an amusing comparison of the diet that an Edwardian rower would have eaten compared to a modern athlete. I think it’s fair to say the Edwardians got the tastier meals.

A rather fun piece of modern art by Peter Schönwandt, who uses old computer keyboards to make art, has a note next to it that if you can’t see the picture made, look at it through a phone. Oh, blimey, that’s clever.

In the history displays, a small tube contains a fascinating history—it was used by journalists following the Boat Race. They would write their report while following the race in another boat, put their report in the tube, and then throw it to a waiting dispatch boy on another boat who would race to get it to Fleet Street.

The past really was a different place.

For kids (large and small), there’s also a rather fun grotto space that tells the story of The Wind in the Willows.

Visiting the River and Rowing Museum

The museum is open daily from 10am to 4pm and costs £10 per adult and £7 for children to visit. Other rates for families and concessions are also available.

You can find the museum about a 10-minute walk from Henley on Thames station, which is a branch line from Twyford. The easiest way to get there is a fast GWR train from Paddington to Twyford, then a 12-minute connection to Henley.

The station at Henley on Thames accepts contactless payments, so you don’t need to buy a train ticket unless you have some form of concession or discount.

Henley is also postcard pretty, with a grand old church in the town centre, the riverside to wander along, and lots of old shop buildings to admire.