Fort Nelson and Titchfield Abbey are free, Portchester Castle is £12 and Titchfield Haven £6.50. Verified August 2026 prices and opening times for nine days out.

Fareham’s best days out are unusually cheap. Two of the biggest, Fort Nelson on Portsdown Hill and Titchfield Abbey, cost nothing to walk into, and the borough’s largest park is free with free parking. The one that costs real money is Portchester Castle, at £12 an adult on the day, and even there the waterside setting around it is a public shoreline.

Every price and opening time below was checked against the venue’s own website on 10 August 2026. Where a price is about to change, we say so.

What a family of four actually pays

Cost of a Fareham day out for a family of four Horizontal bar chart of admission cost for two adults and two children. Fort Nelson free, Holly Hill Woodland Park free, Titchfield Abbey free with two pounds parking, Titchfield Haven seventeen pounds, Portchester Castle thirty pounds on the day, Manor Farm forty-five pounds. Three of Fareham's six main days out are free Admission for two adults and two children, family ticket where one is offered. Checked at each venue's own site, 10 August 2026. Fort NelsonFree Holly Hill Woodland ParkFree, free parking Titchfield AbbeyFree (£2 to park) Titchfield Haven£17 Portchester Castle£30 (£25.50 booked ahead) Manor Farm£45 Portchester Castle and Manor Farm family tickets cover 2 adults and up to 3 children. Manor Farm is in Eastleigh borough, half a mile from M27 junction 8. Chart by Fareham News. English Heritage prices currently include a temporary VAT cut that ends on 1 September 2026. Chart by Fareham News.
Chart by Fareham News. Every figure is the venue's own published price, read on 10 August 2026.

Portchester Castle

The Roman walls at Portchester are the most complete of their kind in northern Europe, and the Norman keep inside them looks straight out over the top of Portsmouth Harbour. It is run by English Heritage and it is the borough’s headline attraction.

Open daily 10am to 5pm. On-the-day prices, with the voluntary donation included:

Ticket On the day Booked in advance
Adult £12.00 £10.20
Child (5 to 17) £6.00 £5.10
Concession £11.00 £9.35
Family (2 adults, up to 3 children) £30.00 £25.50
Family (1 adult, up to 3 children) £18.00 £15.30
English Heritage member Free Free

Booking online before midnight the day before saves 15%, and prices without the donation are lower again: £10.90 for an adult on the day, £23.12 for an advance family ticket. One warning on all of these. English Heritage says its prices currently pass on a temporary cut in VAT on family days out from 20% to 5%, running until 1 September 2026. Expect them to go back up after that date.

Parking is Fareham Borough Council’s, in the two coastal car parks at the castle, at £1.10 an hour between 10am and 6pm.

Fort Nelson, Royal Armouries

A Victorian fort on Portsdown Hill above Fareham (PO17 6AN), holding the national artillery collection: over 300 big guns across 19 acres of tunnels, ramparts and parade ground. The exhibits run from a 15th-century Turkish bombard to a 200-tonne railway howitzer and the Iraqi “Big Babylon” supergun.

Entry is free, though the Royal Armouries asks you to pre-book. Opening is seasonal: daily 10am to 5pm through the school holidays to 31 August, then Tuesday to Sunday 10am to 5pm from 1 September to 23 October.

It is the best-value big day out in the borough by a distance, and the hilltop view over the harbour is worth the drive on its own.

Titchfield Abbey

The gatehouse of a 13th-century abbey, converted into a Tudor mansion and now a striking ruin standing on its own in the fields north of Titchfield village. Another English Heritage site, and another free one.

Open daily 10am to 5pm from April to September, and 10am to 4pm from October to March. Parking is £2 for non-members, free for members with a valid car sticker.

Half an hour here pairs neatly with the walk down the old canal path towards the Meon and Titchfield Haven.

Titchfield Haven National Nature Reserve

Hampshire County Council’s wetland reserve at Hill Head, on the mouth of the River Meon, with hides looking over scrapes and reedbeds. It is a serious birdwatching site: avocet, marsh harrier, bearded tit, Mediterranean gull and water voles are all on the reserve’s own species list.

Open daily 9am to 4pm. Tickets:

  • Adults £6.50
  • Senior citizens £5.50
  • Children 5 to 15 £3.50, under-5s free
  • Family (2 adults, 2 children) £17

Three practical things the reserve is upfront about. The reserve closes when winds of 40mph or more are forecast. There are no toilets on site: the public ones are at the Hove-To car park on the east side and near the Meon Shore Chalets on the west. And dogs are not allowed anywhere on the reserve except assistance dogs, though you can walk them on the public footpath alongside the canal. Parking is in the council’s pay-and-display car parks near the sailing club or the seafront, not at the reserve itself.

Holly Hill Woodland Park

Fareham’s largest public open space, a 35-hectare Victorian landscaped garden and parkland at Sarisbury, built around a chain of interconnecting ponds, lakes and water features made of Pulhamite stone. It is owned by Fareham Borough Council, and both entry and parking are free.

The council has secured initial support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund for a project called Holly Hill Rediscovered, aimed at restoring the lakes and ponds. £111,000 of development funding has been awarded, the council has put in £60,000 of match funding at that stage and has set aside £1.056 million towards a full restoration costed at £2.046 million. Expect work on site in the next few years.

Fareham Live

The town’s theatre, at PO16 7DB, is the rebuilt replacement for Ferneham Hall and is run by Trafalgar Entertainment. If you have not been since the old hall closed, it is a different building with a different name.

Coming up in 2026:

  • In The Night Garden Live, 29 to 30 August
  • Stepping Out, 15 to 19 September
  • Dog Man: The Musical, 23 to 25 October
  • Wilko: Love And Death And Rock N Roll, 5 to 7 November
  • Jack and the Beanstalk, the pantomime, 11 December to 3 January 2027

The town centre and the market

West Street is the pedestrianised heart of Fareham, with the Fareham Shopping Centre off it. Council car parks in the middle of town are £1.00 to £1.50 for the first hour and free after 6pm in the barrier-controlled ones, with the outer car parks starting at 70p.

Fareham Borough Council also brings an Artisan and Farmers Market to the pedestrianised part of West Street, 10am to 4pm, on these remaining 2026 dates: Saturday 15 August, Saturday 19 September and Saturday 17 October.

Westbury Manor Museum on West Street is closed. Hampshire Cultural Trust withdrew from running it and it shut to the public on 31 December 2024, with the building handed back to the council. Listings sites still show it as open; it is not.

Whiteley Shopping

An open-air shopping village at Whiteley Way, PO15 7PD, on the west edge of the borough by M27 junction 9, with high-street and outlet stores, restaurants and a cinema. It is the borough’s wet-weather default and the reason a lot of Fareham shopping trips end up on the M27 rather than in the town centre. Phone 01489 566000 for current opening hours.

Manor Farm, just over the border

Half a mile from M27 junction 8 at Botley, inside River Hamble Country Park, Hampshire County Council’s working farm museum is the one paid family day out close to Fareham that runs all year. It is in Eastleigh borough rather than this one, but it is a 15-minute drive from Fareham town centre.

Open daily 10am to 5pm from 1 March to 31 October, Thursday to Sunday 10am to 4pm from 1 November to 31 January, and daily 10am to 4pm through February. Last entry is 45 minutes before closing, and there is no need to book.

Prices: adult £13, child (3 to 16) £11, over-65s £12, family of four £45, under-3s free. Parking is included in the ticket, but if you are only visiting River Hamble Country Park you pay for parking separately. Free entry for one carer with each paying visitor, and 50% off for Armed Forces ID holders and their immediate family. Dogs are not allowed on the farm, though the surrounding country park is fine for them.

Free, and outdoors

If the budget is nothing at all, the borough gives you plenty:

  • The Solent shore at Hill Head, Meon Shore and Salterns, with the Isle of Wight in front of you. Council coastal car parks charge £1.10 an hour between 10am and 6pm.
  • Portchester foreshore around the castle walls, on the top of Portsmouth Harbour.
  • Holly Hill Woodland Park, free with free parking.
  • Portsdown Hill for the best view in south Hampshire, with Fort Nelson at the top of it and no admission charge.

Before you go

Prices and opening times change, and two things on this page are on a clock: the English Heritage VAT reduction ends on 1 September 2026, and Fort Nelson drops to Tuesday to Sunday opening the same day. Check the venue’s own site before you set off, particularly for anything weather-dependent.

More Fareham local information: house prices, trains to London, roadworks and travel and planning news.

Sources