What's going on at RAF
Upwood
September 2023
Half the site have now been demolished. There are about 18 buildings that still survive. The 4 hangars will also remain and are being used by different companies.
the Guardroom has been saved and hopefully restored.
December 2019
Demolition of the buildings start in the summer next year 2020
Homes plan for RAF Upwood is recommended for approval by planners
Written by JULIAN MAKEY
UP to 160 new homes and five acres of employment space are set to get the go-ahead
on the disused former RAF Upwood base.
The move makes Upwood the fourth military site in the Huntingdon area to be
earmarked for housing.
Planners at Huntingdonshire District Council are recommending approval for the
redevelopment by Strawson Holdings, which owns a substantial part of the former
airfield.
They had opposed an earlier plan by Strawson's to build 650 homes and 25 acres
of employment space on the site.
The council's development management panel will consider the scheme, which also
involves demolishing most of the buildings left on the airfield, many of which
have become derelict and the target for arsonists, on December 16.
Five thousand new homes are on the cards with the redevelopment of Alconbury
airfield and 3,750 could be built on the redundant airfield at RAF Wyton in
the longer term. A further 400 are planned for RAF Brampton which is being disposed
of by the Ministry of Defence.
The earlier scheme to redevelop the Upwood site raised concerns about its impact
on local infrastructure, especially the road system.
Bury Parish Council has approved the plan, but a minority of councillors were
worried about pressure on services and the loss of historic buildings. Wistow
Parish Council has also recommended approval, but Ramsey Town Council, Upwood
and the Raveleys Parish Council and Kings Ripton Parish Council have all come
out against it.
The plan involves retaining the guardroom, the administration block, water tower
and the former commanding officer's home Upwood Hill House, together with some
buildings near the hangars, with the aim of retaining a sense of the former
RAF station.
A question-mark remains over uses for the rest of the site.
Old hangars on the base are in the separate ownership of an aero-engine firm.
The airfield has roots going back to the First World War and took its present
shape in the expansion of the RAF just before the Second World War when it was
a bomber base.
Canberra jets flew there after the war, but flying stopped in the 1960s.
In more recent times it was given a new lease of life as an extension to RAF
Alconbury but was run down after the Americans no longer needed it.
An adjacent American medical facility saw its last patient in 2012.
September 2012
Planning has just been submitted for 168 houses at RAF Upwood
I get a large amount of email asking permission
to access the site to take photographs. Anyone wanting access to RAF Upwood
need to speak to
Strawson Property, as they own the site.
Their email address is as follows: rafupwood@beattiegroup.com
Most of the site at Upwood is derelict. The site
closed in 1995 and most of the buildings have been vandalised. Due to the amount
of buildings that have been set on fire, Omni Security patrol the site and a
new set of gates have been put in just before the Guard room and Head quarters
buildings stopping people accessing the site. The gates are open during the
day for access to Turbine Motor works. Shut and locked at evenings and weekends.
The 4 "C type" hangars are owned by Turbine
Motor works, were they recon jet engines.
Two of the hangars have been put up for sale/rent.
Strawson Property
own the rest of the site and have been awaiting planning permission for years.
Development Progress: Planning application for mixed use development consisting
some 650 dwellings and 10ha of employment land was refused at appeal in August
2010. However, the appeal decision is now subject to a Judicial Review.
The
married quarters at Upwood have been sold off to the public and are accessable
by all.
Some of the bomb stores and ammo sheds still survive, look at my picture page
on Upwood to see what still remain.
Urban
Assault use the site for Airsoft gamers, much like paint ball but with plastic
ball bearings. Well worth alook.
Towards the NE side of the airfield, The Royal Observers Corp Post.
Royal Observer Corps Monitoring Posts are underground structures all over the
United Kingdom, constructed as a result of the Corps' nuclear reporting role
and operated by volunteers during the Cold War between 1955 and 1991.
In all but a very few instances the posts were
built to a standard design consisting of a 14-foot-deep access shaft, a toilet/store
and a monitoring room. The most unusual post was the non-standard one constructed
in a cellar within Windsor Castle. A third of the total number
of posts were closed in 1968 during a reorganisation and major contraction of
the ROC. Several others closed over the next 40 years as a result of structural
difficulties i.e. persistent flooding, or regular vandalism. The remainder of
the posts were closed in 1991 when the majority of the ROC was stood down following
the break-up of the Communist Bloc. Many have been demolished or adapted to
other uses but the majority still exist, although in a derelict condition.
Between
1958 and 1968 a countrywide building programme resulted in a network of 1,563
underground monitoring posts, approximately eight miles apart, distributed throughout
England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, at an estimated cost of almost
£5,000 each. The posts were excavated to a depth of twenty five feet,
a monocoque reinforced concrete building was cast and bitumen tanked (or waterproofed),
before the whole structure was covered by a compacted soil mound. Entry was
facilitated by a steel ladder in a vertical shaft leading to a single room,
providing accommodation for three observers to live and work, with a separate
toilet compartment with chemical closet. Air was circulated from grilled ventilators
at both ends of the post and electricity was provided by a crated 12 volt lead–acid
battery, charged occasionally by a portable petrol electric generator. New instrumentation
detected the peak overpressure from any nuclear burst, together with photographic
indications of the burst location and size, plus resulting levels of radiation.
Conditions in these spartan posts were cramped, cold, and in some cases damp.
Updated 6/6/2012