Contrebis 2018 v36 LANCASTER’S LOST AIRFIELD Gordon Clark Abstract This paper charts the history of the airfield at Scale Hall, Lancaster, from 1912 to the present day. Before World War 1 The first aeroplanes seen in the Lancaster area were Claude Grahame-White’s on 13 April 1910 – it landed off Bare – and Jules Vedrines’s over the Lune Valley and Clougha on 25 July 1911 during the Round Britain Air Race (Phillipson 1994, 9 & 12). On 14 July 1912 the first aircraft landed in Lancaster on a field at Scale Hall Farm. Robert B Slack flew from Southport to promote his aviation courses (Phillipson 1994, 16; Jefferson n.d.). His light, slow, single-seat Bleriot monoplane spent the night in a marquee erected for the event (Lancaster Observer and Morecambe Chronicle 1912 12 July, 5, & 19 July, 5). The airfield had no facilities: it was simply a big field. The few civilian pilots could use the site for refuelling, in bad weather or as an overnight stop on a longer daytime flight in a short-range plane. The use of farmers’ fields was normal at this time. Elsewhere, planes used beaches, as at Southport, Blackpool and Middleton Sands. Blackpool hosted aviation meetings in 1909 and 1910 and Morecambe had an air carnival in July 1914 (Phillipson 1994, 18; Bingham 1990, 151). World War 1 The first aircraft to land at Scale Hall after the British declaration of war on 4 August 1914 was Lt B C Hucks’s Bleriot on 18 August when he came to dine with Lord and Lady Ashton at Ryelands (Lancaster Guardian 1914 22 August, 5). The wartime role of Scale Hall airfield is difficult to trace. The aviation literature for the period focuses on the planes, the pilots (and casualties) and the combat: the airfields are under-recorded (Cross & Cockade International n.d.). There were no published wartime revisions of the pre-war Ordnance Survey maps and the interwar maps similarly showed nothing because there were no permanent structures to map. It was just a field (Delve 2000). There are no known plans of Scale Hall airfield during World War 1. The local newspapers mentioned nothing due to censorship. After the war, however, the Lancaster Observer (1919 2 May, 4) noted that “Scale Hall field has during the war been a recognised landing station, but the restrictions on newspapers prevented the fact being made public”. Flight (1919 28 August, 1153) noted that Lieutenant Macrae MC was using the airfield and its Bessonneau hangers (timber-and- canvas structures, quickly erected by the Royal Flying Corps). Tents for the staff would be normal except at the large bases, and a large, level, obstacle-free field would suffice for a landing ground. The online lists of Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) airfields are divided on whether Scale Hall became any sort of official airfield during World War 1. The Forgotten Airfields website says it was an RFC site as do Davis and the Wings of Glory website (Forgotten Airfields n.d.; Davis 2007; Wings of Glory 2013). Ruxton (1986) lists it as a World War 1 airfield, though not necessarily an RFC one. He classifies it as a ‘Landing Ground’ (a simpler site) not a ‘Service Aerodrome’. Bones Aviation Page (2011) says it was used in World War 1, but not by whom or for what. Other major listings of UK airfields are less informative. The UK Active and Disused Airports website (n.d.) shows only where Scale Hall was. The Airfields of Britain Conservation Trust website (n.d.) says Scale Hall airfield has an earliest known date of February 1918, which is unlikely. The UK Airfields and Airports website (2014) does not list it, nor does The Aerodrome website or the unreferenced but extensive list of RFC airfields on Wikipedia (The Aerodrome n.d.; Wikipedia 2017a). The major operational bases of the RFC were concentrated in 13 Contrebis 2018 v36 South-East England and along the east coast for obvious operational reasons. There is no evidence linking Scale Hall airfield with the wartime production of wooden aircraft wings for the DH9 at Waring and Gillow’s factory in Lancaster. So it seems that during World War 1 Scale Hall airfield was still little more than a basic stopping point or landing ground for flights between southern England and Scotland and Ireland. The Bessonneau hangers would protect aircraft from bad weather and provide basic cover for repair work. There were no other permanent facilities. This would fit with an Royal Flying Corps categorisation as a Third Class Landing Ground (Wikipedia 2017b), like, for example, Horsegate in North East England (North East Land Sea Air Museum n.d.) and Tibbenham in Norfolk (Norfolk Heritage Explorer n.d.). Between the World Wars After World War 1, there were many surplus planes and well-trained pilots, a surfeit of airfields and a much heightened appreciation of the potential for aviation. How would Scale Hall airfield fit in? Flight noted that at Scale Hall Lieutenant Macrae MC “reigns in solitary glory over the Government Bessoneaux and landing ground” (Flight 1919 28 August, 1153). Clearly traffic was not brisk. However, on 1 May 1919 (pp567–8) Flight reported a plan for a UK airmail service, with Scale Hall as an intermediate stop on the London (Hounslow) – Manchester (Didsbury) – Belfast (Aldergrove) route. The Lancaster Observer and Morecambe Chronicle (1919) picked up on this plan on 2 May (p4) in optimistic terms. “An air station between the two towns [...] will probably be as important in time as some of the great railway junctions are now”. However, the local area itself was unlikely to generate much traffic, and arguably an airfield here was needed only for as long as aircraft had a short range and needed refuelling stops. The omens were not good. In June 1919 Alcock and Brown made the first non-stop Trans-Atlantic flight. On 16 May the Lancaster Observer and Morecambe Chronicle reported (p6) a non-stop flight from Glasgow to Manchester in four hours. And on 2 May (p8) the paper reported the lifting of the wartime ban on civilian flying but also the imposition of new regulations on pilots, planes and airfields to ensure safe civilian flying. That would mean investment in airfield facilities that could be justified only by sufficient traffic. In 1920 the Government allowed local authorities to build municipal airports and in 1929 it provided funds for this from the Unemployment Grants Committee. Manchester and Blackpool took up this option: Lancaster and Morecambe did not. By 1929 the new Morecambe Road had been open for seven years (Endnote 1). It linked the two towns on a route that was broader, more direct, almost level and cut across the field pattern: but it removed the northern portion of the airfield. Whereas before 1922 there were potential maximum runway lengths at Scale Hall of 525 metres and 845m (Endnote 2), the maximum after 1922 was only 320m, and aircraft were getting bigger and heavier and needed longer runways than Scale Hall could provide. A 500-metre runway was about the norm for RFC stations in World War 1 (Wikipedia 2017b). A 320-metre runway was definitely short. In 1933 only eight runways, out of the 105 British landing grounds with recorded runway lengths that were listed by the Automobile Association, were shorter than Scale Hall’s and another four equalled it (Automobile Association 1933). Nonetheless Scale Hall was still sufficient for private pilots in small planes. In the early 1930s the Automobile Association (AA) provided guidance by inspecting and listing landing grounds for its members across the UK. They gave site plans, details of the airfield’s facilities and how to get fuel (Automobile Association 1933; Flight 1932, 538). Here is Scale Hall’s entry: Lancaster SD 45 62 [OS map reference] AA Landing Ground [LG] – J.L Dixon, Scale Hall Farm, Lancaster. Fuel: Skerton Garage. Barton & Townley, Lancaster would bring petrol to 14 Contrebis 2018 v36 LG on request. Hotels: County Hotel or Royal King’s Arms, Lancaster. Telephone: Scale Hall Farm, adjoining LG. No hangars. The AA plan shows the restricted layout after 1922 (Figure 1) (Automobile Association 1933). The southern boundary remained the Midland Railway’s branch line from Lancaster’s Green Ayre station to Morecambe. The electrification stanchions were a landing hazard. After 1922 the almost parallel northern boundary was the new Morecambe Road with its tall lamp-posts. The eastern and western edges were the nineteenth-century field boundaries. Figure 1 The layout of Scale Hall airfield after 1922 (Automobile Association 1933) One use of the site was as a venue for ‘joy flights’, as early as 1927 (Morecambe Guardian and Heysham Observer 1927 27 July, 12). Sir Alan Cobham’s ‘Flying Circus’ travelled the UK in the summers between 1932 and 1935 in support of National Aviation Day (Flight 1932 17 June, 538). The public could inspect planes on the ground and for 4 shillings could go for a short local flight (Royal Air Force Museum n.d.). A local resident remembers doing just that from Scale Hall (Chesterman 2017). Interestingly, Lancaster, Morecambe and District Aero Club, formed in 1934, chose the expanses of Middleton Sands rather than the constricted Scale Hall site for their clubhouse and hanger (Flight 1934 6 September, 921). As early as 1929 there had been proposals for a Lancaster–Morecambe airport at White Lund, a far bigger site south of the railway line from Scale Hall that straddled the municipal boundary (Morecambe Guardian and Heysham Observer 1929 13 July, 7). The boroughs jointly bought White Lund around 1935 (Morecambe Guardian and Heysham Observer 1935 28 June, 9).