STONEHENGE AERODROME AND THE STONEHENGE LANDSCAPE, by Martyn Barber (English Heritage 2014)

[Moonraker]

This detailed study by GWF member Martyn Barber tells of the construction of an airfield used by the RFC and RNAS extremely close to Stonehenge. (The nearest aerodrome building was, by the summer of 1918, only some 300 metres from the stones.) It includes detailed accounts of the development of the airfield, impressions (mostly unfavourable) of people who served there, and the training syllabi.

 

Just as interesting is Martyn's account of how the landowner contrived to retain most of the buildings after the war, turning some of them into a pig farm and others into shanty-town accommodation, apparently rented out to people connected with nearby Lark Hill Camp. The book describes the efforts in the 1920s at local and national level to restore the landscape around the monument to nature.

 

There are many aerial photographs of the site, some taken by the USAF during WWII that show outlines of the former buildings.

 

Martyn examines the tale that the RFC wanted Stonehenge to be demolished (as happened to two nearby cottages) because it interfered with flying, and fins the earliest record of it to be in a book published in 1956. Noting that "some doubt that any official request was made, but presume that some expressed desire to be rid of the stones, whether informal discussion or wishful thinking during the war, lies at the root of the story", he points out: "There is nothing in [contemporary]  press coverage, or the relevant Office of Works, War Office or Air Ministry files to suggest that such a request was ever aired, let alone made." Such files contain many papers relating to damage - real and threatened - to the immediate landscape and its archaeology, and never is the idea of demolition raised.

 

Printed copies are available from on-line vendors for £25-32. Curiously someone on Amazon quotes $23.71 + $3.99 shipping, but when I tried to order it I  was told that the seller did not ship to the UK ...

 

Happily I then discovered that it's available as a free download, for example

here

 

For more about the book's contents:

 

English Heritage webpage

 

 

Moonraker

 

 

 

[Sepoy]

Moonraker,
Thank you for posting the link to this report, it looks very interesting and I look forward to reading it.
Sepoy
 

[Frank_East]

Moonraker thanks for posting.I have seen it recorded that the RFC wished to see the Stonehenge stones arranged as to not interfere with operational training...may have been discussed at unit level with no reference made upwards.Incidentally.

 

There is also a publication which Martyn Barber has contributed to entitled "The Stonehenge Landscape" which covers the use of the Stonehenge area as a military airfield.Martyn appears to have been involved in the publication of five other publications on Stonehenge and Archaeology,one on Wiltshire military aviation published as "From Pit Circles to Propellers"  

[Moonraker]

16 hours ago, Frank_East said:

...I have seen it recorded that the RFC wished to see the Stonehenge stones arranged as to not interfere with operational training...may have been discussed at unit level with no reference made upwards.Incidentally...

Frank, I - and no doubt Martyn - would love to know where it is recorded! In his book, Martyn notes various comments that have been published about the "let's demolish Stonehenge" story, but not this one.

 

I have no doubt that aerodrome staff made all sorts of facetious and exasperated comments about the stones. If they were that much of a nuisance, why build a bally airfield so close to them - a question to which Martyn suggests some answers.

 

Here's

 

a clip

 

of the demolition of part of the airfield which I posted in another thread a while back.

 

Moonraker

Edited 30 March , 2017 by Moonraker

[Moonraker]

[Moonraker]

I think that it may have been a cutting that was being offered on eBay by one of those people who cut up old magazines and offer articles for sale. Or it might have been one of the photographs published in The Times on August 5, 1927 p14 and March 11, 1929, p20. (I no longer have access to the paper's archive since my local library cancelled its subscription.) I approached the paper itself c1998, but it couldn't locate the original plate.

[NigelS]

13 hours ago, Moonraker said:

I think that it may have been a cutting that was being offered on eBay by one of those people who cut up old magazines and offer articles for sale. Or it might have been one of the photographs published in The Times on August 5, 1927 p14 and March 11, 1929, p20. (I no longer have access to the paper's archive since my local library cancelled its subscription.) I approached the paper itself c1998, but it couldn't locate the original plate.

 

The image is identical to that in The Times of  Monday, March 11, 1929 Page 20 (Issue Number 45148; Gale Document Number GALE|CS335749227)  the caption is different (split), but assuming the comment is correct indicates an exact date for when it was taken (Saturday 9th March 1929):

PRESERVING THE AMENITIES - A view of Stonehenge, taken on Saturday by a staff photographer of The Times, showing the famous remains and the surrounding country. Beyond the road which runs diagonally across the picture is that land already acquired for the nation in order to preserve the amenities of Stonehenge, and in the distance are the sheds of the aerodrome which is being |SPLIT| demolished. The land in the right foreground is part of the plot for which an appeal was made in The Times on Saturday in a letter signed, among others, by the Prime Minister and Mr. MacDonald. Of the £16,000 required for this plot a further £8,500 is needed, and less than three weeks remain before the expiry of the option to purchase

 

In Moonrakers version the caption gives '...£4,500 now needed' so it looks as if  the image must have been reused on a later date - no later than the 23rd March as the paper was reporting by then  that less than £2,000) was needed -  but it doesn't show up in a search, so possibly an  edition not archived by Gale? 

 

Page 14 of the Friday August 5th, 1927 edition (Issue Number 44652 Gale Document Number GALE|CS117644549) has an image taken from a similar position ( with the image dateable to August , 4th,1927)  but, being earlier, shows more buildings on the horizon to the top left prior to their demolition :

AN APPEAL FOR STONEHENGE - On another page to-day we publish an appeal by the Stonehenge Protection Committee for funds to enable a considerable area of the land surrounding the famous circle on Salisbury Plain to be purchased for the nation. Above we produce a view of the Downs taken yesterday, showing how the site is disfigured by buildings of various kinds including a disused aerodrome

 

NigelS

[Moonraker]

Here's another one, showing more the airfield buildings on the right - and indeed on the left. I think that this may be the photo in The Times of August 5, 1927.

[NigelS]

3 hours ago, Martynb said:

This is the version that appeared in the Illustrated London News on 23rd March 1929 (p481) - same photo, different caption. There are similar views, taken from King Barrow Ridge (the only way you could get the cottages in the foreground, Stonehenge itself, and the aerodrome buildings beyond in shot at the same time) in the National Archives and the Historic England Archive, but none that match this one, so perhaps a press shot?

This appears to be the same image as in  Moonraker's post 6 and The Times of 11th March, 1929 note the vehicle half way up the hill which appears in all three versions (the roads were certainly a lot quieter back then - nearly a case of 'not a tramcar in sight'!  The version above has been cropped; it also lacks the resolution, and I'm wondering if they cleaned up the skyline when it was reproduced, but this could also be down to the modern day scanning of the images and JPG/file compression artefacts; The version in The Times Archive (Gale) is a very poor scan  with a lot of noise, but I would imagine that  its  scanning would have been of the whole page with a set up  geared to getting the best quality result for the typeface (to allow OCR etc) rather than for the images.

 

NigelS

[NigelS]

3 hours ago, Moonraker said:

Here's another one, showing more the airfield buildings on the right - and indeed on the left. I think that this may be the photo in The Times of August 5, 1927.

I agree, I can't see any obvious differences when compared with the one in The Times Archive for August 5, 1927. In this image there's isn't even a tram car - or, for that matter, any other vehicle - in sight to give an indication as to whether they might have been taken at a different times.

 

NigelS