GAMA site at Greenham Common to become giant car park

[GAMA_at_Greenham]

Please forgive me if I am posting this in the wrong forum - I need support in trying to get a planning application refused.

As I'm sure you know, the historic GAMA site at Greenham Common is a Scheduled Monument and is a unique memorial to the Cold War. Apart from some hangers that are due to be pulled down, it is all that remains of RAF Greenham Common– the runway was pulled up over 10 years ago, most of the site has been returned to common land,and the buildings are now an industrial park.

GAMA was sold to a private owner in 2003 when the treaty obligations expired. In 2007, the owners managed to get a temporary planning permission to store up to 6900 cars on the site. Since then, nothing significant has happened on the site, and the owners have now come back seeking a permanent planning permission.

English Heritage are opposed, the council's own planning officers are opposed, local residents in Greenham are opposed, and there is a council planning committee hearing on 25 January at which the final decision will be made.

As one of the local councillors for Greenham, which includes the common and of this site, I am campaigning on behalf of local residents to get this planning application refused. I have an online petition at Save the historic GAMA site from becoming a car park (http://GAMA.greenham.org.uk) where you can also find more information about what is proposed. Please do sign the petition and add your comments, and please do share this with anyone else you know (both here and in the US) who has an interest in the protection of historic and unique sites such as this.

If you have any queries, I would be delighted to answer them – either post here, or e-mail me.

Thank you for your support.

Cllr Julian Swift-Hook
Ward Councillor for Greenham
West Berkshire Council

[bobward]

Forgive my cynical comment.

Didn't lots of people ariound greenham write lot's of petitions, and hold all sorts of events to stop the CLCM deployment, all those years ago?
Now we're asked to support keeping the bunkers so they can't park cars there?


I'll get back into my box.....:hmm::rolleyes:

[alemaobaiano]

GAMA is an historic monument????

What's wrong with turning it into a car park or, better still, pulling the whole lot down and returning it to common land?

As someone who spent his first deployment of several months freezing in tents to secure that area, I really can't think of that dump as historic. Nothing significant happened there, did it? Unless I broke the world record for laying DON-10 cable ?? :ugh:

TTFN

[anotherthing]

I'd wager that the actual reason for the petition is not to protect the historical 'importance' of the site, but to stop the locals having to put up with a massive car storage faclity in their 'back yard'.

Cynical? Moi???

[Jabba_TG12]

One of the contributors amused me....

"This site is of definate historic interest and would be terrible to defacate it."

Not to mention bloody painful! :uhoh: :}

Seriously though... I saw at least two RIAT's there in the late seventies/early 80's. Managed to dodge the guarding job though, thank god. I hope those behind the petition succeed. If nothing else, to spite the other councillor who claimed it was "just a bombdump"... its a teensy bit more than that. ;)

[barnstormer1968]

alemaobaiano

Maybe it was you who used all the Don 10 cable!......

That left me with none to use a few years later,so that when I was lying down on stag one summer day and a special forces patrol wandered into my location, I had to escort them to my TC, rather than calling him or sentries to me!

Oh how professional I felt that day:\:\

[NutLoose]

You can view the site as it is today here...such a waste

R.A.F Greenham Common GAMA (GLCM Alert and Maintenance Area) April 2010 - Derelict Places (http://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/main/showthread.php?t=15293)

Greenham Common ICBM Base Picture Heavy - Derelict Places (http://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/main/showthread.php?t=15082)


Hope that helps.

Odd double barrelled name that Cllr Swift-Hook, I bet you get the usual comments and no doubt duck them.......

Interesting quote of the Flypast Forums

Flying A Services?
I have recently been in touch with Berkshire Council in the hope of having a look around the silos and control tower at Greenham Common.

They say they no longer own the silos site but a company called Flying A Services does.




So is that to say the council owned the site that was getting trashed, sold it and now are objecting to the new owners trying to do something with it???? If that is the case they should never of sold it in the first place!

[Al R]

Happy Days. God bless America, the PX, Southern Comfort and John Daniels @ $1 a bottle..
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n239/thrust_01/IMG_4657.jpg
Each peace camp was colour coded by the women (the proudly self titled peace bitches). If they ever broke in at a certain spot, they would sign the fence with pride. A bit like dogs and lampposts. I guess its this kind of anecdotal history that needs to be saved as well.. this from a few years back.
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n239/thrust_01/IMG_4756.jpg
The chow hall. We used to laze on the grass here.
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n239/thrust_01/IMG_4543.jpg

Looking into the GAMA, now..
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n239/thrust_01/IMG_4704.jpg http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n239/thrust_01/IMG_4710.jpg
.. and in 1982. Foliage wasn't allowed and grass was to be no taller than 1.5 inches.
http://www.bunkertours.co.uk/milhist2/1-007.jpg
VAG used the C5 pan to store cars back in 07 anyway.
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n239/thrust_01/IMG_4612.jpg
The perimeter fence is a mass of patches.. evidence of multiple break ins.http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n239/thrust_01/IMG_4722.jpg
Leafy Berkshire. 25 years ago, there were battles on this particular stretch that would have made the miners blush. One peace campaigner peacefully cut Ritchie B's thumb off with bolt croppers. Other things that made LACs blush were blatant demos of some pretty heavy one on one Peace Campaigner action. Of course, it diverted our attention.. as I recall, we didn't seem to mind.
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n239/thrust_01/IMG_4735.jpg
This (below) was the exact point that the Smellys first set up shop. They called their tents (made of sheets of plastic) benders. It is now a Garden of Remembrance for one of the girls who was a regular there (I can't remember if it was Honey or Marmalade who got wiped out on the roundabout). We used to chuck coal over the wire to let them keep themselves warm.
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n239/thrust_01/IMG_4810a.jpg
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n239/thrust_01/IMG_4807.jpg

When we pulled out, they painted down 25 metres of road 'The slags say don't go rockapes'. But, job done - we outstared and outspent the other side. Clearly a case of leafy NIMBYism, but setting that aside, the site means something - I imagine many of today's teenagers would look upon such close UK/US co-operation with disbelief. So it needs to be preserved because what it represents needs to be remembered. How many times do we look at something like this from our short sighted perspective (scrapping the TSR airframes anyone)?

[Pontius Navigator]

As I'm sure you know, the historic GAMA site at Greenham Common is a Scheduled Monument and is a unique memorial to the Cold War. . . .

English Heritage are opposed

I think sadly, from your point of view, that few here will care what happens to GAMA.

The only association with the Royal Air Force is the name. As a wholly occupied US site there is no affinity with most first-generation ppruners here. There is a parallel with Second World War infrastructure where younger first generation were quite happy to demolish the lot. Only with the passage of time have the second and third generations and their forebears begun to realise the importance of preserving the heritage. That is clearly why English Heritage is keen to support you.

From an RAF perspective we are losing far too much of our own historic infrastructure, I won't list them, it is too long, to bother with a modern US facility that you wish to preserve.

Not only that, proper preservation needs lots of money and without that a car park would be the better option.

[Al R]

Just to be a bit anal for one moment, its not just the name and there is a more modern RAF connection (aside from the thousands of wire walkers who spent a few weeks there at a time on a roulement basis). 501 Tactical Missile Wing had Gunners posted onto its strength throughout the 80s (I did almost 2 years and the manpower balance was 2/3 US and 1/3 UK), wearing and using US military kit to blend in, and acting as one of the checks and balances to ensure that the kit wasn't trundled out on a whim or fired off should the DoD decide to do something that we didn't agree with.

Of course, that wasn't the only reason - but in the most brutal terms, any decision to go had to be bilateral and having a presence there with an equal involvement in launching (the missiles were referred to as 'Priority A' Resources) was the only option - the Sun actually ran a headline with the screamer 'Cruise - now we can shoot to stop Yanks'. No one really talked about it, and it seems strange to think it was almost 30 years now, but even with time fuzzying things, we talked and joked about it often.. a little like rear seat Vulcan crew discussing the pilots leaving in a hurry I guess. But it was never far from the back of everyone's thoughts.

It might now have the cachet now that, say, RAF Bicester might have in terms of needing to be saved. But it will do. And then of course, it'll be too late. Thats why an objective presence like English Heritage is needed because like it or not, what it represents is significant and it represents a chilling time in our history. Ironic that Top Gear trashed that Morris Marina there a few years back. In itself, a pretty crap car, but probably not reason enough on its own to trash one of the couple of hundred left that represent the start of the modern decline of British motor manufacturing. Of course, you could argue that we shouldn't want to remember a decline.. ;)

[newt]

How on earth can this be called a "Historical Monument"? Surely the piles of concrete should have been cleared by the Yanks before they went home? Could it be that the local residents really want to keep whats left of the base to avoid any future development as a housing estate?

Cynical! Moi! Not in My Book!!:rolleyes:

[NutLoose]

Is the car parking just around the site, as a scheduled listed monument I would doubt they could do much more...... Odd thing is Bruntingthorpe is just down the road from me and is used for similar, it has lots of fences security and patrols to protect the cars stored there, so would the parking of cars on the site not be a good thing? it would increase security and keep those out that had been vandalising the site, thus helping to preserve the place?

[Al R]

What was once the runway, peritrack and airfield is now rambling, common land used for walking, and couldn't be used for housing anyway. The GAMA itself represents only a tiny portion of the whole site and decontaminating the hangers/pans for housing, would cost a fortune (isn't there a long standing rumour about a nuke being burnt there during a B47 crash?). The pans are already used for storing vehicles - I cannot see what extra value would be gained by pulling down the GAMA (that would cost a fortune in itself) and adding room for a few hundred more cars. In the grand scheme of things, its a drop in the Ocean. The GAMA is also disected by what is known (iirc) as Draytons Gully - which used to flood badly.

Watching this, I remember well the SR-71 being trashed with white paint and watching this arrival by for RIAT, in July 83.

Greenham Common (http://wn.com/Greenham_Common)

[Chicken Leg]

I agree with the above cynicism. If you want to stop the development for local reasons, that's your business. But to appeal on this forum for historical military reasons, is a tadge disingenuous.

I would have thought that encouraging commerce in the area would have been a more attractive option than allowing a few piles of crumbling concrete to crumble some more.

[814man]

Like Al R I spent quite a lot of time at Greenham Common between summer of 82 and late 83. I do think that there may be something about preserving such a historically significant site but would agree with PN that we don’t do this very well with our own RAF heritage.
Perhaps we should consider looking at Faldingworth and Barnham, or later storage areas such as Waddington, Scampton etc first.
Flickr: 814man's Photostream (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sd814/)

[ShyTorque]

I was involved in military aviation during the cold war. I used the Greenham Common site as an airfield and later got a big rollocking for flying over it without breaking any rules or regulations, to appease the locals; I say "what a flaming cheek"! :mad:

Can someone point me to the petition for bringing it back as an airfield? I'll sign that.

[GAMA_at_Greenham]

Thank you for your comments - the application was refused last night by 9-2 votes. Details here: Newbury Today | GAMA plans refused by councillors (http://www.newburytoday.co.uk/News/Article.aspx?articleID=15725) Dr Andrew Brown, the Regional Director of English Heritage, took the unprecedented step of attending the council meeting to oppose the application. According to Dr Brown, GAMA is the most important heritage site in the stewardship of West Berkshire Council, and moreover it has the potential to be the flagship Cold War heritage site in the UK. If this is so, to store 6,000 cars on it would be just plain wrong! The vast majority of the former Greenham Common airbase has already been returned to common land - it even has its own Act of Parliament, the Greenham & Crookham Commons Act 2002, protecting it now - and 150 acres of the site (the part that had the main airbase admin buildings on it) is now an industrial park run by Greenham Common Trust - the profits (c.£2m per year) are ploughed back into the community as grants to charities and other worthy causes.