Gosport was – literally – “on the waterfront” and the term came into common use to describe the operating area of the school. This term has stuck to and followed CFS ever since such that the hangar and line area of CFS has continually been known as “the waterfront”.
An entertaining and plausible theory Wholigan, certainly when I went through CFS at Rissington the term was in common use. However I have just had a quick leaf through Frank Tredreys' book "Pilot's Summer - Central Flying School Diary", an account of his CFS course in 1935 and cannot find any reference to "the waterfront". His flying was carried out at "the flights", as was my basic flying training some 30 years later.
Looking in the book "RAF Little Rissington - The Central Flying School Years", I found the first use of the term "waterfront" in an entry relating to 1965. That of course only shows that term was in use when the author wrote the item (sometime post 1965) not that it was used contemporaneously.
There we go, Sunday afternoon anoraking over!
YS