Re Halton House OM. Have they come to some arrangement with the Rothschilds?
I always understood that under the terms of the gifting of Halton by the Rothschilds, the house and estate had to be returned to the family in the same state that they were originally, and when looked at a few years ago the cost of returning the house alone was several 10s of £millions.
That's an utter myth. On Alfred de Rothschild’s death in January 1918, his nephew Lionel inherited Halton House and it’s lands. The Air Board were keen to purchase the estate as an officer cadet college for the nacent Royal Air Force which had been formed on 1 April from an amalgamation of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service. Fortunately, Lionel was a willing seller, as the house was the distasteful equivalent of 'Beckingham Palace' in the 1900s and the estate including Halton House was purchased by the War Office in 1919 for £112,000 FREEHOLD. The was about a quarter of the probate value of the estate; clearly a bargain for the War Office (now MOD).
As for Halton, some bright spark wants to move recruit training to Cranwell - more eggs in one basket! However, they will need to build a new parade ground, accomodation, classrooms, SLA, SFA, Messes, schools, etc... There will be a HUGE cost to this and also the local Authorities in Bucks and Lincs will need to be consulted for such a big move. I would still expect to see Halton by 2025 as if it does go ahead (subject to finding massive sums of money we don't have) then all this will have to be built and there will need to be an overlap in recruit training. Also, there are some 20-odd lodger units at Halton to find homes for. So realistically we are at least 5 years away and probably closer to 10 from the site being cleared. Then there are the other plans at Cranwell to sort out - running legacy flying training and MFTS at the same time, building the new RAFCAM, resurfacing the runway and sorting out the very tired infrastructure on the camp (which was looking very run down last time I looked). Quite where the DIO are going to get this cash is quite beyond me - they can't even maintain what they have now!!!
My guess is that parts of Halton will be sold and some will stay as it becomes an overflow for HQ Air (which is hugely overcrowded). Oh, and the recruit training area is Grade II listed as is the OM - so their use is limited unlike the old hospital site that was bulldozed and the land sold off to build houses ~10 years ago.
LJ