HMS Sultan event hire
HMS Sultan is the Royal Navy's engineering and air engineering training establishment on Military Road in Gosport, and it's a live base with its own year-round events calendar, from the wardroom's Officers' Summer Ball to the family fun day and the bonfire night. We've had three bookings inside the wire so far - the mess Christmas event in December 2025, the Officers' Summer Ball in July 2026 and the family fun day a month later, which was a return booking - and each one asks for something different from the kit.
The Gosport work sits on the corporate event hire in Gosport and Christmas entertainment in Gosport pages, and the venues page lists the rest of the named venues we work at.
The Officers' Summer Ball
The Officers' Summer Ball is the set-piece so far. An officers' ball is an evening booking with a difference: the guests are in mess dress, the venue is historic, and the entertainment has to fit around a formal programme. The mix we took out covered both moods, on the grass against the barrack buildings: the laser clay pigeon shooting range with its scoreboard, the rodeo bull in its inflatable surround, the magic selfie mirror for the groups in full dress, a row of Western carnival games, the army assault course and inflatable axe throwing. Six pieces, one evening, and the shooting range ran on dry grass without mains power.
The family fun day
A month later we were back on the base for the family fun day, which the welfare side runs for service families and has us back for year after year. That one spreads out: the big inflatables and the electronic games across a wide grass field, short rounds and the queues moving all day, because the crowd is families with children from morning to late afternoon. The same field takes the Christmas events the base runs too - the bonfire and fireworks night is the fixture locals know about.
The mess Christmas event
The December job was the other mood entirely: indoors, in one of the mess rooms, with the cash grabber, Whack an Elf and the Great Elf Race cabinet round the walls and Rodney the rodeo reindeer taking the rides. Christmas events in a mess room want pieces that pack small and run off a socket, because the room works as a room again the next morning.
Working inside the wire
Sultan isn't a venue with a box office. Bookings come through the mess, welfare and unit committees, the base controls who comes through the gate, and guests are service personnel and their families - which means every enquiry starts with who's booking, for whom, and what access the base needs to clear. On the day our crew arrive with the kit as booked, with the paperwork the unit asked for already sent: we carry £10 million public liability insurance with licensed-premises cover, the risk assessment and method statement go out with the booking, every inflatable is PIPA-tagged and inspected annually by our in-house RPII inspector, the electrical kit is PAT tested, and the operators who stay with the kit are ours, RPII-examined, first-aid trained and enhanced-DBS registered.
Gosport is twelve miles or so from our unit in Havant, M27 then the A32, so the kit and crew are on site quickly and the travel line on the quote stays small.
To book HMS Sultan or any event on base, ring us on 01428 751925 or fill in the enquiry form and tell us the date, which committee is booking, the space - hall, courtyard or field - and the rough numbers.
