Initial Survey

 

 

 

The biggest finding was that the drainage for the entire site is superb – despite the torrential downpour there was no standing water on either our proposed runway or the aircraft parking area. The former main runway which now serves as an access road is another matter altogether….

East/West former runway looking east from the mid point

The rest of the site was pretty good, although at the moment it takes a certain amount of imagination to see an active airfield…

Eastern edge of aircraft parking area with WW2 drainage!.... looking north

Parking area looking northeast. WW2 runway surface visible

The two pictures above show the future aircraft parking area and location of the ops office. The original tarmac surface appears to be reletively intact below 6 inches of turf. Interesting from a heritage / archaeological point of view, but not so good from an operations viewpoint. The drainage is superb, and a good surface should be possible with some careful rollering.

The runway….

Runway looking east

The photo was taken from a small patch of high ground and overlooks the full length of the future runway.  Visible on the left are the jumps for the Point to Point horse racing course. The runway will be some 10m to the right of these obstacles and then 25m wide. Towards the middle distance there are some small trees which line one of the current boundaries, and these will have to be moved.

Runway looking west

The view looking west is a little more diffiult to decipher, but not impossible. Again, looking down the length of the runway, it will pass between the copse on the right and the sporadic (previously mentioned) trees on the left. This photo is taken some 900m from the previous, although the usable length of the runway will be around 650 to 700m. The reason for this is the telephone cable which runs across the land on its eastern border…

Phone line. Eastern perimeter

The height of these poles will dictate where we can start the runway. Obstacles like this are delt with in CAP168 – the CAA’s document on airfield creation – a document we will be constantly referring too, dispite the fact that this will initially be an unlicensed flying strip and therefore outside of the CAP’s juristiction.

Archaeologically speaking, RAF Morpeth still has some surprises…

Former flight offices probably from RAF Milfield

Remains of an air-raid shelter.

There are enough parts of this shelter to re-construct it in its original form…

Tie down point

Under the water (!) there is one of a pair of tie-down points for RAF  Morpeth’s resident Blackburn Botha or Avro Anson aircraft. This is located on one of the very well preserved dispersals which would have had a Miskins Blister Hangar over the top. Other dispersals show signs of where these tie-downs were located, but these were the only ones visible still in situ.

As previosly seen, there are remenants of the former runways, even substantial sections which are still visible. For the most part, RAF Morpeth is slowly vanishing under the grass. How much remains below the soil?

In the Northeast corner of the RAF site there is a complete Miskins Blister Hangar which has been re-clad over the years, but is structurally sound. There are several derelict buildings around the perimeter of the site, but nothing substantial. Approximately 1 mile away is the most visible structure – the 200ft tall double water tower which served the domestic site.

There are 2 cannon ranges on site – both perfectly intact and one even has the original earth and sand mound for shell impact. Here is the southernmost one (not publically accessible)

 

Range butt

 

 

Remenants of a fire post – there would have been a few buckets filled with sand here, nothing overly exciting…

 

fire post

 

 

There are rumours of extant air raid sheters and area command bunkers on the site, but we have yet to find evidence of them. We are in posession of a copy of the 1943 airfield plan, ammended in the 1960′s and can identify any structure using it. Archaeological assessment will continue as Wings Over Northumberland secure more of the site and protect these structures from oblivion.