RAF Kirton Lindsey for sale
 

So ever wanted to own an RAF station? You can now buy one complete with hangars, barrack blocks and the rest:
304-acre RAF Kirton Lindsey site put up for sale with potential for major North Lincolnshire homes development | Scunthorpe Telegraph

..and on the same page under 'More property news' is

and
Move to sunny Scunthorpe!

I agree with your sentiments about Scunthorpe but Kirton is far enough away from Scunny to be disassociated! It's not a bad little village actually.

In other news Panshangar closes on 20 September, limited flying from the 14th. Another one gone. Wellesbourne Mountford is under threat too.

When Panshanger closes, it will be 49 years to the day from my first flight, in an Auster, for my 3rd birthday :{

Good job they didn't sell off all the FMQs at Scampton then.............

Question.
 

Why don't these places return to the original owners? I'm guessing, but these former airfields were taken up under emergency powers brought about by WW2, were they not? Why cant they then go back to the original owners of the land? I know a lot of time has passed but....and why didn't more of them go back straight to proper use (farming) after the war?

I think if they can trace the original owner it is...but then the price to buy it back will at it is now rather than as it was i.e. farmland

Panshanger
 

Wasn't Panshanger where Lasham held their fertility rites?

Thanks for reminding me.... Not

Binbrook (my local) WAS sold back to the original land owners and joins the many that have returned to farming:{

Bah humbug....

V1

IIRC there was a test case in the late 1960s/early 70s regarding the sell off of an RAF station which had been taken from its owners before the war. It was somewhere like Yatesbury or Wootton Bassett.


It was ruled that the original owners had the right to purchase back their property and at the price that was paid for it.


Certainly, in 1974 the Upwood airfield went back to its owners and the runways were torn up for hardcore (rubble that is not smutty magazines). The owner is said to have claimed that the cost of the buy back was more than offset by the price of the hardcore.


Old Duffer

The so-called 'Chrichel Down Rules'. There's a lot of gen on the web somewhere.

Looks like a grass strip flying club maybe and houseing for the poor and needy (RAF enlisted men/women)

Old former airfields.
 

Still like looking at them, imagining what they were all like before WW2, during also. RNAS Merryfield as it calls itself (not really an air-station, more of a training satellite a dozen odd miles west of Yeovilton) had an open day/evening as I recall where the previous landowners owners/associates were invited back for a look around-don't think they will get the chance to buy back . The place is a pretty good nature reserve above all else really, amongst the other things it does. The old Chard canal ran right through it, was filled in to make the airfield in 1943, and is now lined with concrete dragons teeth (of defensive stop line manufacture). In the summer, in the green lush woodland it looks like something from an Indiana Jones movie. It just reeks of history, if you look for it.
The old hard-core spectacles were dug up there as well,18 years ago. Can be melancholy places at times. Was RAF Isle Abbotts (I think) in WW2.
Still, got to move on.

I looked for the remnants of the canal and couldn't see it on Google.

They certainly did a good job filling it in !

Last Chance
 

You only have an hour left to get your bids in:
Council bids to buy RAF Kirton & create thousands of jobs with business, housing & leisure development | Scunthorpe Telegraph

"The Kirton site incorporates barracks – including eight accommodation blocks, four mess halls and a vast array of other buildings – along with four hangars complete with an aircraft control tower and associated offices. There are also 241 acres of open airfield, some of which is currently used by the Trent Valley Gliding Club."

hangarshuffle, you are quite correct about the old Chard canal at Merryfield. I used to explore the old aerodrome in the '50s-'70s and well remember the site!

Here is the canal on an old OS map, with Merryfield's runways superimposed:


The canal used to run between the 2 yellow markers on this photo:


The other line feature, to the west of the aerodrome, is the old line along which the 'Chard Snail' would chuff its way from Taunton.