Bovington Camp, England: travel guide to the Dorset garrison and The Tank Museum

Bovington Camp is a British Army base in Dorset, in South West England, set in the heathland of the Purbeck countryside about a mile north of the village of Wool and some 19 kilometres west of the port of Poole. A working military training centre since 1899, it is best known to visitors as the home of The Tank Museum, one of the great military museums of the world.

For travellers searching for Bovington, The Tank Museum, TankFest or Lawrence of Arabia in Dorset, it offers a remarkable day out steeped in military history.

The Tank Museum

Bovington became a tank training centre in 1916, during the First World War, and is today the headquarters of The Armour Centre. The Tank Museum, founded in 1947, holds the largest collection of tanks in the world, with almost 300 vehicles from 26 countries. Among its treasures are the only working German Tiger I, the world's oldest surviving combat tank from the First World War, and "Little Willie," the very first tank ever built. Each summer the museum stages TankFest, when historic vehicles take to the arena.

Lawrence of Arabia

The soldier and writer T. E. Lawrence, famed as Lawrence of Arabia, served with the Tank Corps at Bovington and lived nearby at the cottage of Clouds Hill, now cared for by the National Trust; he died after a motorcycle accident close to the camp, and the area keeps his memory.

Practical information

Bovington lies about a mile north of Wool, whose railway station is on the line from London Waterloo to Weymouth, and around 19 kilometres west of Poole, within easy reach of the Jurassic Coast and the Isle of Purbeck.