Flowers to Carpet-baggers
Cycling up the rise to Kelmarsh, through a chorus of birdsong, after a shower of warm summer rain, passing the church at the summit to my right.
Crossing the main road, I passed estate cottages to my left.
A plaque recorded a project at the height of World War Two to rehouse people rendered homeless by a domestic fire which got out of control during a strong wind.
THESE 10 COTTAGES
WERE REBUILT IN 1948
BY COL. C. G. LANCASTER MP
ON THE SITE OF 13 ELIZABETHAN
COTTAGES DESTROYED BY FIRE ON
4TH MAY 1943.
There are undulations and ground workings in the fields at the top of the rise after Kelmarsh. Unmentioned on the OS map, was there quarrying for stone in the past, perhaps providing building materials for Kelmarsh Hall, the church, and estate workers’ cottages?
Or were they something to do with the tunnelling work for the now disused railway up ahead.
An avenue of trees leaves those earth workings and follows the contours round to an area of woodland called the New Cover. Spelt covert, but pronounced cover, this is a patch of woodland created and managed to provide cover for foxes. For here I’m at the heart of what was once prime fox hunting country.
The farmhouse called Top Lodge stands above the line of the tunnel on high ground, I guess upon an outlier of Oolitic limestone. There’s an airshaft across the lane from Top Lodge, confirming the presence of the tunnel below.
There was a not too distant hum from the A14 away to my right, the sound level exacerbated by a brisk south wind, a warm wind keeping temperatures high.
A water tower noted on the OS map was totally shrouded by dark, dense, ivy-covered trees. It stands opposite the entrance to Wheatfield Lodge Farm, beside which the OS map also notes a “disused camp”. I presumed at the time that this must have referred to an army camp, but why here?
Turning right at Harrington, I headed south, crossing the A14. Immediately on my right a sign reads “Aviation Museum”. As I press on I’m struck by the plateau of flat land opening up to my left, strangely detached from the gently undulating land that I had cycled until then. Connecting with the Aviation Museum not long passed by, I asked myself, was there an airfield here once? I saw no evidence to confirm my suspicion.
Passing on to other thoughts, I forked left at Foxhall, intending to cycle on to the village of Old. Near Kites Hall Farm, my lane passed through fields planted with purple-blue Phacelea and Sunflowers. I paused at a gate, surrounded by flowers and breathing in the perfumed air. How wonderful.
After pausing at Old, a village name derived from the (w)old on which it was located, and talking for ages to another cyclist who pulled up beside me at the green for a chat, I cycled on through Lamppost and Draughton , before heading back to Foxhall and Harrington. Once more the flat plateau stretched out before me, and shortly before Foxhall, I came upon the roadside memorial.
My earlier suspicion was confirmed. The peaceful lanes and countryside I had cycled through once resounded to the noise of aircraft taking off from a giant airfield, constructed during the Second World War. Home to the US Airforce group known as the “Carpetbaggers”, clandestine airdrops and bombing missions left from here en route to Germany and other targets on the continent. The memorial commemorated the two hundred airmen who gave their lives flying from this very spot.
One war was over, and another took hold. The airfield now under crops, trees and fields of flowers held Britain’s first nuclear weapons of the Cold War. Should the worse have befallen the world, Thor missiles would have been launched from near where I was standing.
The Thor missiles were removed in 1963, and the buildings, runways and most of the roads and taxiways were demolished in 1965. The resultant hardcore formed the base of many other roads and buildings then under construction elsewhere at the time. The airfield once again returned to agriculture, and now the peaceful turning of my wheels.
© John Dunn.
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From the archive:
Something from nothing
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