Brunel's SS Great Britain museum gets smellier!

Brunel's SS Great Britain is full of fantastic historical scents by AromaPrime. Whether the reek of dirty linen in steerage sends you running to the top deck, or the mouth-watering smell of freshly baked bread leaves you ravenous for your rations, each scent places you into the shoes of a Victorian passenger or crew member who was embarking on their own extraordinary journey.

'We already have 15 smells across our museums. You can inhale the smell of Brunel's cigar smoke in his Duke Street Office, get a whiff of engine oil in the Dockyard, and of course, discover the stench of the famous vomit in stewardess Annie Green's cabin. This Easter, we're cranking up the smells as we launch our most immersive experience onboard yet.'

— Natalie Fey, Interpretation Manager

This Easter, visitors will smell their way back in time to 1845 and the SS Great Britain's pioneer voyages. In the First Class Dining Saloon, they can share the excitement of travelling on the world’s biggest, most luxurious ship. Alongside a new soundscape, the dining saloon will feature the smells of a chocolate speciality by one of the ship's past passengers, as part of a taster menu of new scents for visitors to rate and review over the Easter holidays.

Founded in 1973, AromaPrime supplies the SS Great Britain with a range of unusual smells. Speaking on the importance of scents throughout history, Liam R. Findlay, Scent Consultant at AromaPrime, said:

'Having life-like recreations of even the whiffiest stenches can be really important when helping museum visitors understand the atmospheres and conditions of the past. Knowing the very flavour of the air people breathed can help us put ourselves in their shoes, understanding their working conditions, their diets, maybe the state of their homes or even the unpleasant atmospheres of horrible situations such as fighting in trenches.

'Both good smells and bad smells spark empathy, understanding and often personal, emotional responses to lives in the past.'

Get the details on this new, fragrant event on the Brunel's SS Great Britain website!