Comments on: Come friendly bombs and fall on Stonehenge

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 03:06:16 +0000

English Heritage links to old-maps.co.uk which has a 1924 map of the (now former) aerodrome site. You can see Stonehenge in the upper right corner. The aerodrome both dwarfs Stonehenge and is very close to it -- only about 4 or 5 times its diameter away -- and that doesn't show the where the runways were either. Madness!

By: Tim Brown

Tim Brown — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 08:12:00 +0000

Thanks Brett, a little more digging (and a bit of deeper googling) and I have found the following on the English Heritage site...

'A First World War military airfield, built in 1917 and closed in 1921. It was used by units of the Royal Navy Air Service and the Royal Air Force as a training base for day and night bombing. Training continued at Stonehenge until 1919 and in 1920 the site was briefly opened again by the School of Army Co-operation until 1921. During 1944 the airfield may have been briefly used by aircraft attached to the American 29th Infantry division, but this is uncertain.

The First World War airfield was constructed to the south-west of Stonehenge. The extensive 320 acre site was made up of a complex of buildings and roads that can be seen on aerial photographs of the early 1920s. The site was split into a Technical area and a Domestic area. The Technical area contained six coupled General Service (GS) Aeroplane sheds, General Repair Sheds, numerous huts for workshops, Bessonneau hangars, two Handley Page aircraft sheds as well as fuel storage tanks. The Domestic area was used to house the off duty air crews and consisted of various messes and a large barracks area of tents and huts.

Photographs taken in 1934 show that the complex was dismantled by that date, and on photographs taken in 1943 the aerodrome is only visible as earthwork remains. Traces of the site can still be seen as cropmarks on aerial photographs taken in 2001"

(Rod Priddle's book, 'Wings Over Wiltshire' apparently contains a detailed account of the history of the airfield.. I am waiting for my local library to get a copy for me)

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 03:45:14 +0000

Interesting, I hadn't heard of the Larkhill aerodrome before. But it's definitely not the Stonehenge one. Wiltshire County Council's database has separate entries for each: Stonehenge Aerodrome here, and Larkhill Camp here. There's nothing left of the former, but as you say there are still hangars at Larkhill (actually Strangways, you can see them in Google Maps street view), still owned and used by the Army in fact. The database entry says these are 'probably the oldest aeronautical buildings in existance'. Not sure about that, but they must be close to it.

By: Tim Brown

Tim Brown — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 14:41:16 +0000

There was certainly an airfield at Larkhill, a short distance to the NE of Stonehenge. The aerodrome was active from 1910-1914 and often referred to in contemporary publications (e.g. 'Flight' magazine) as 'Salisbury Plain Aerodrome'. Larkhill was used for some of the earliest flights in the UK, and home of the Bristol Aeroplane Company's Flying School where civilian and military pilots learnt to fly. There is little remaining of the airfield now, a couple of hangars still standing are I believe listed buildings? One thing's certain, it is not at the location shown on your photograph... which if correct must relate to another airfield, although my own researches have not yet revealed anything in that position?

By: Airminded · Friday, 3 January 1941

Airminded · Friday, 3 January 1941 — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 12:00:48 +0000

[...] Clough Williams-Ellis has an interestingly different position. He would like to see Wren's churches rebuilt, but not in their original locations -- not, in fact, in London at all. Instead, put them 'in some provincial city or town that has honourable scars to be healed', where it would likely be 'the most gracious, notable, and revered building in the place'. Decentralization, diffusion, democratization... If the enemy's bombs serve to disperse this cultural heritage more widely and more effectively over our country at large, there will at least be a credit side to the account. [...]

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 04:24:55 +0000

Wow. That's pretty loopy!

On Midsummer's Day each year, at dawn, the stones allow a precise beam of light to hit a certain portion of the so-called "bed stone" at one end of the circle. The ray is focussed with a quartz crystal hidden within the "mirror stone" through which it is reflected. This causes an intense laser beam to hit the bedstone directly where the forehead of a sacrificial victim would normally lie. The laser would cut through the skull like butter and melt the brain, allowing the gathered pagans to sip the molten cerebrum from a bony chalice, thus gaining special knowledge of witchcraft, which thousands of years later allowed them to defeat the Romans from their stronghold in the wilds of Caledonia.

There's nothing about that paragraph I don't like. Pure comedy gold.

By: Ian Evans

Ian Evans — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:50:16 +0000

I have a vague feeling (acute unreliability warning) that I read of this in some memoirs many years ago, but it wasn't an official proposal, more a matter of bored pilots enlivening a quiet night in the mess.
But there are people who want to demolish Stonehenge - check this -
http://johnmurraypenfold.20m.com/stonehenge.htm