I did a lot of gliding from Newton in the late 50s when it was the base for No 2 Gliding Centre which trained instructors for the Air Cadet weekend schools. The airfield had what I believe was a unique feature in that the designated runway had an 11 degree kink in it.
This arose because a previous Sation Commander was one Batchy Atcherley - in his youth a member of the RAF's High Speed Flight which cleaned up the Schneider Trophy in 1931. Batchy started every day with a spirited beat-up of the airfield in his personal mount, usually a Spitfire and I had enjoyed many of these when my posting had earlier co-incided with Batchy's at Cranwell.
By the 50s he had moved on to a Meteor. When he arrived at Newton he found that the runway was officially too short for his Meteor so he sat down with the plans, drew the longest line possible, then bent it sufficiently to make the new 'runway' just long enough for his morning workouts to continue to delight his troops.