The Military and Salisbury Plain

Stonehenge and Salisbury Plain have long been linked with both the military and aviation, and the First World War aerodrome wasn’t the first military establishment – or the first flying ground – near the stones. In 1897, after the British Army had been carrying out training exercises on Salisbury Plain for some time, the War Office began buying up large areas of farmland to the north of Stonehenge, drawn by the area’s relative isolation.

The area also had a history of military ballooning – Royal Engineers reconnaissance balloons were taking part in exercises in the area from the 1880s. One happy result of these exercises is that the earliest known aerial photographs of any archaeological monument in Britain were taken of Stonehenge, by Royal Engineers balloonists, in the summer of 1906.

Aeroplanes first came to the area in 1909, when the civilian pioneer Horatio Barber rented a strip of land on nearby Durrington Down (which would become known as Larkhill), built a shed to house his plane, and made several test flights. A year later the first military aircraft sheds (hangars) were built there.

Initially the British government was slow to recognise that aeroplanes might be of any military use other than for reconnaissance. But when in 1911 they decided to expand the old Balloon Section of the Royal Engineers into an air battalion, they based its No. 2 Company – which was focused on planes – at Larkhill. In 1912 the company became part of the newly formed Royal Flying Corps (the air arm of the British Army). Military flying continued at Larkhill until the summer of 1914.

The Aerodrome and its buildings

Why site an aerodrome here? There were several good reasons – there was a fairly level expanse of flat, open land to use for landing and take-off, there were already military facilities nearby at Larkhill, and there was good road access. The nearness of Stonehenge itself seems to have been of little if any concern – after all, there was already a history of flying nearby.

The aerodrome had two camps, which lay on either side of a take-off and landing ground. The Main (or Day) Camp, only about 300 metres west of Stonehenge, straddled the London to Exeter road (now the A303) and contained the main technical buildings, offices and accommodation blocks. The Night Camp, which included two ‘permanent’ hangars to house the massive Handley Page bombers, lay to the north-west, close to what is now the Fargo Plantation drop-off point between the visitor centre and the stones.

As its name suggests, the Night Camp was intended for those who did their flying mostly after dark, but as it was incomplete by the time the Armistice was signed in November 1918, in practice the Main Camp probably served both night and day pilots.

Aerodrome Life

Diaries and reminiscences provide an insight into life at Stonehenge aerodrome, and suggest that it wasn’t particularly well thought of by the trainees. Leslie Semple described the state of the airfield:

I was landing when my left wheel hit a large mound in the rough ground, instantly smashing one centre section strut and also swinging me around 90 degrees. This made me cut across the track of Lt. Bowie, who was landing directly behind me, with the result that he had to stall and … smashed two struts and a tyre … The airfield is in a rotten state and I have only had one crash previous to this in the whole of my flying career.

Another trainee, Cyril Box, was unimpressed by the camp, the planes and the instructors:

As a home … [the camp] was awful … The instructors were what we called ‘a windy lot’ too. It may have been the rather doubtful machines or it may have been that, being qualified and fairly experienced pilots ourselves, we were apt to draw comparisons. Whatever it was, nobody liked Stonehenge [camp] and everybody was glad that the course was a short one. Our whole object in life … was to get away again, although it was the last school and meant that the next place would be France.

Mythbuster: a Plot to demolish Stonehenge?

The idea that a working military airfield could have been sited so close to Stonehenge seems extraordinary now. Perhaps this is one reason why a story took hold – which is still repeated today – that the RAF wanted Stonehenge demolished because the stones were a hazard to flying. But was there any truth in it?

The story seems to have first appeared in print in 1956 in the book Stonehenge by Professor Richard Atkinson, published while he was excavating there. He wrote:

It is said that the authorities concerned demanded, in all seriousness, that the monument should be demolished, as its stones constituted a dangerous hazard to low-flying aircraft.

The story has since been repeated many times, both in archaeological literature and military history, always with slight variants, and either as fact or as rumour. But the different versions have one thing in common – not one of them cites an original source.

The story has recently been examined by Martyn Barber of Historic England. His comprehensive research into the aerodrome’s history uncovered nothing in any files to suggest that an official request to knock down Stonehenge was ever made. In fact, on the contrary, the records reveal that the military co-operated fully with the Society of Antiquaries, who maintained a map of all the archaeological sites in the area to make sure their locations were known.

Perhaps the story has been accepted without serious question for so long because it fitted the narrative that the Stonehenge landscape, and Stonehenge itself, have always been under threat from modern intrusions.