19th April 2019
There was a time when Greenham Common, near Newbury in Berkshire was frequently in the news. Formerly the site of RAF Greenham Common, a WW2 airfield used by the RAF and USAF but more famously the USAF Cold War base that housed the 501st Tactical Missile Wing and their nuclear warhead carrying Cruise Missiles. As a result of which it also became home from 1981 to 2000 to the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp.
The Yanks went home in 1992 and in 1993 the MOD declared the base surplus to requirements and put it up for sale. The built up area in the south of the site mostly became a business park (New Greenham Park), the rest was returned to the public, the long runway dug up and removed, and is now open space for recreation.
So I went for a walk in the Good Friday afternoon sunshine to see what was there. And to take some photos - an activity which once upon a time would have got you shot by a trigger-happy US Military Policeman.
The only building of any note remaining on the north side of the base is the Control Tower, now a heritage and community hub. There is a reasonably sized, donation funded, and easy to find car park here so that's where I started.
Walking west along the gravel path from the tower I spotted another small relic of the US occupation, an American style Fire Hydrant.
When the base was in the hands of the USAF much of the street furniture, direction signs, road markings, etc. was brought over from home. Although they didn't go as far as driving on the wrong side of the road.
About those hydrants. When you see one get hit by a car on TV or Hollywood movies they usually fall over and produce a nice plume of water. Years ago when attending a callout one night to the old American School to the north of the airbase I witnessed someone reverse quite hard into one of these hydrants. It didn't fall over. There was no plume of water. I did make a right bloody mess of the back of matey's Ford Cortina though! 😀
Crossing the airfield where once was Europe's longest runway there is now open scrub, lots of Gorse - bright yellow in the bright sunshine - and several shallow ponds, dug to provide wildlife habitats and drinking water for the cattle that now graze the common.
Apart from the odd small chunk of concrete left behind after the clear-up there's no sign of the runway.
We are assured by the authorities that there's also no radioactive contamination from the 1958 unfortunate incident which resulted in the cremation of a B47 bomber, its pilot, and the nuclear bomb it was carrying. Something that was kept under wraps until the mid 1980s.
To the south west of the airfield is the other significant relic of the US occupation. Behind a strong metal fence are a number of large, low structures that might seem familiar to fans of the Star Wars films.
This is the Ground Launched Cruise Missile Alert & Maintenance Area (GAMA)..
Six blast proof, nuke proof shelters that protected the mobile transport and launch vehicles and their crews who within minutes of the attack warning would have driven out over the local roads to secret pre-arranged launch sites ready to strike back and help send us all to hell.
Shortly after the USAF left I had to visit Greenham Common on official business in the middle of the night. (Nothing that exciting, just a fault on a line feeding the Police radio transmitter that was on the other side of the airfield.) It was pitch black and I followed the security guard out to a darkened building. While he hunted for a light switch he remarked that only a couple of months previously we'd have needed a high security clearance to get anywhere near this place and here we were just blundering about in the dark.
I tried to work out where it was I'd been that night but to be honest it was a long time ago and it was that dark I don't know if it was at the GAMA or maybe the COMCEN over near the inverted cone shaped water tower.
It's as well that there were no cows back then or we'd probably have blundered into them in the dark.
I never visited the airbase when it was occupied by the USAF but talking to colleagues who did the hazard back then wasn't cows but trigger-happy "Snowdrops" (US Military Police) who weren't averse to taking pot shots at vehicles that strayed into the wrong area and asking questions later. It probably didn't help that certain people delighted in "winding up the Yanks" on occasion.
Walking back across the airfield I came across this odd metal structure. Very solid steel and set in the ground. I had no idea what it was but later found out it's the base of a weather recording station. Another small Cold War relic.
That information came from this very interesting web site, a Virtual Tour of Greenham Common which is well worth a look if you want to know more about the site.
I continued back across the airfield to the Control Tower past the much bigger ponds that have been dug out near the north perimeter fence along Bury's Bank Road, which were providing sport and cooling for several excited dogs, and a pleasant place to sit for their owners.
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| A map of the former RAF Greenham Common airbase (OpenStreetMap https://osm.org/go/eusDLGUI--) |
So concluded my second visit to Greenham Common, about 25 years apart in time and experience.
It was a nice wander in the sunshine even if I wasn't being paid to be there this time and stirred up a couple of memories at the same time.
More photographs (and more cows) in this Flickr Album as usual.
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