Sammy Miller Motorcycle Museum

The Sammy Miller Motorcycle Museum stands at Bashley Cross Roads on the edge of New Milton, a short distance from the New Forest. It grew from the private collection of Sammy Miller MBE, the Northern Irish rider who won eleven successive British Trials Championships and more than 1,400 competition events.

Miller began restoring machines in the 1970s. What started as a few of his own competition bikes in a garage expanded into a public museum that now holds roughly 500 motorcycles.

Almost every exhibit has been fully rebuilt by Sammy, his long-time collaborator Jim and the on-site workshop team; the great majority remain in running order. The collection includes factory racers, rare prototypes and machines from the earliest days of motorcycling to later Grand Prix machinery.

Visitors move through several distinct areas. The Trials Hall contains historic off-road machines, among them GOV 132, the Ariel that became one of the best-known trials bikes of its era, and the Samuel Hamilton Special that Miller himself built as a teenager.

The Racing Gallery holds multi-cylinder Grand Prix bikes such as the 1957 Moto Guzzi V8 and the 1947 AJS Porcupine.

Separate spaces are given to Norton, Vincent and other British marques, while a later upper gallery extension opened in 2021 displays further British machines from the early twentieth century together with cross-sectioned engines and archive material.

Sammy continues to work in the workshop most days, preparing new acquisitions and maintaining the existing collection. On site is L’Arte at Sammy’s Pit Stop, the café run by Mark and Dan Ellson, together with craft shops and outdoor space with animals. Free parking is available.

For anyone travelling through the New Forest or the Hampshire coast with an interest in motorcycles, the museum offers a concentrated look at machines that were once raced or ridden hard and have been returned to full mechanical life rather than left as static exhibits.