RAF Wroughton

RAF Wroughton
Wroughton, Wiltshire
Near Swindon in England
RAF Wroughton
Coordinates 51°30′25″N 1°48′07″W / 51.507°N 1.802°W / 51.507; -1.802Coordinates: 51°30′25″N 1°48′07″W / 51.507°N 1.802°W / 51.507; -1.802
Site information
Owner Science Museum Group
Open to
the public		 no
Site history
Built 1 April 1940
In use 1979 (1979)

RAF Wroughton was a Royal Air Force airfield near Wroughton, in Wiltshire, England, about 4 miles (6 km) south of Swindon. It opened on 1 April 1940.[1] At some point in time, control of RAF Wroughton was handed over to the Royal Navy, and it became RNAS Wroughton. The airfield now belongs to the Science Museum Group and is home to the Science Museum at Wroughton, which houses the large-object storage and library of the Science Museum.

It is now the home of The Grand Tour motoring series' test track.[2]

Science Museum at Wroughton

The large-object storage of the Science Museum has been at Wroughton since the 1970s.[3]

RAF Princess Alexandra Hospital

RAF Hospital Wroughton was part of the station.[4] The RAF General Hospital (as it was known) opened on 14 June 1941 under the command of Gp. Capt. E C Foreman, during the second world war, by October 1943 8 additional wards had been constructed. At the end of March 1944 the bed capacity was 1000. SECO hutting with inter-connecting corridors added a further 350 beds. Wroughton’s busiest period followed the allied landings in Normandy on D-Day. The first casualties arrived on 13 June 1944, landing at nearby RAF Lyneham. In the 6-months following D-Day 4,811 casualties passed through Wroughton. Wroughton continued as a General Hospital treating military patients, and from 1958 took NHS cases as well to relieve backlogs in the Swindon area. Following a visit to the hospital by Princess Alexandra on 4 July 1967, the Queen conferred the prefix “Princess Alexandra’s” on the hospital on 4 October 1967. When the hostages from Beirut were released in August 1991, Wg Cdr Gordon Turnbull a psychiatrist based at Wroughton, with his team, debriefed John McCarthy, Terry Waite and Jackie Mann and provided the counselling necessary to ease them back into freedom. The hospital closed on 31 March 1996 as part of the Conservative Government's defence cuts at the end of the cold war. The hospital was eventually demolished and the site, called Alexandra Park, contains housing and a Conference Centre.

Current use

In December 2013 planning permission was given for a large solar farm to be constructed on about 67 hectares of the airfield, where over 150,000 solar panels would be installed, in a joint project of Swindon Commercial Services now known as Public Power Solutions, a commercial arm of Swindon Borough Council[5] and the Science Museum Group.[6]

The Amazon Video motoring series', The Grand Tour operates their test track on the north end of the airfield.[2]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Chris Ashworth (1985). Action stations: Military airfields of the Central South and South-East. Volume 9 of Action Stations. Cambridge: Stephens. p. 307.
  2. 1 2 "Jeremy Clarkson fears BBC could sue over new racing show The Grand Tour if too similar to Top Gear". The Telegraph. Retrieved 24 October 2016.
  3. ↑ Big Object storage. Science Museum. Accessed March 2015.
  4. ↑ RAF Hospital Wroughton Royal Air Force: PMRAFNS. Accessed March 2015.
  5. ↑ https://publicpowersolutions.co.uk
  6. ↑ [s.n.] (11 December 2013). Wiltshire solar farm at former RAF Wroughton site approved. BBC News. Accessed March 2015.

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