The Wat Tyler Centre opened in Wat Tyler Country Park, Basildon in late July 2009.

This new Heritage Lottery funded visitor centre features a permanent exhibition, themed around the industrial and environmental heritage of the park.

The exhibition begins with the historical use of the site as an explosives factory at the end of the 19th Century, and moves on to explore the ways the land has been used ever since, notably as the Sea Transport Stores last active during the Suez crisis, then as a country park.

Visitors of all ages are invited to explore the exhibition through it’s graphic information panels and it’s custom digital and manual interactives, ranging from a nitroglycerin mixing hut where the roof blows off if you get the mix wrong, to an unexploded bomb you can de-fuze, to oral history listening posts set into the fins of a second world war bomb replica.

The natural history and sustainable development side of the exhibition features a strobe-driven 3D zoetrope that captures butterflies in slow-motion flight, along with a digital interactive where you can demolish a tower block.