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A multi-million pound naval museum is to be created in Plymouth to help share and celebrate the city’s rich military history.

The National Museum of the Royal Navy plans to open a permanent museum in Devonport, centred around the former nuclear submarine HMS Courageous.

Work on the project, which will cost £5 million, is due to begin later this year.

Aided by a mix of fundraising and National Lottery investment, around £125 million has already been injected into Royal Navy heritage projects over the past decade.

Similar schemes have helped to more than double visitor numbers to other attractions including Portsmouth's Historic Dockyard.

And now it’s Plymouth’s turn.

(Image: Hull Daily Mail)

Over the next 10 years, the existing museum will move to the revamped and expanded Bonaventure House, also known as Officers’ Terrace, in the South Yard.

That will allow the public to see thousands of objects and artefacts held in Plymouth.

In addition, submarine HMS Courageous will move to a nearby dock, with a neighbouring building turned into a museum telling the Royal Navy’s Cold War story.

“Plymouth’s naval history has not been particularly well served over the years,” said the National Museum’s Director General Prof Dominic Tweddle.

“We can do better, so let’s do it.

“Courageous is a fantastic attraction, wonderfully restored and preserved, but at the moment she’s difficult to see.

“If all goes well, we will have a museum which tells the story of the Royal Navy and how it relates to Plymouth, as well as the Navy’s story since 1945.”

(Image: MOD)

The first work is due to begin on the site later this year with the whole project taking seven to ten years.

Further east at Yeovilton, the hangars currently occupied by the Fleet Air Arm Museum are reaching the end of their lives – but a 12-year-plan is in hand to completely rebuild museum, overhaul the galleries, and display upwards of 100 classic aircraft from more than a century of British naval aviation.

As for Portsmouth, as well as the new-look Royal Marines Museum, a ‘centre for discovery’ will open in the storehouse behind the existing National Museum galleries to allow the public to see thousands of items currently in storage.