RAF Wroughton is a former

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) an ...

airfield near Wroughton, in

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

, England, about south of

Swindon Swindon () is a town and unitary authority with borough status in Wiltshire, England. As of the 2021 Census, the population of Swindon was 201,669, making it the largest town in the county. The Swindon unitary authority area had a population ...

. Ministry of Defence aviation activity ceased in 1972. The airfield now belongs to the Science Museum Group and is home to the

National Collections Centre The National Collections Centre, near Swindon, England, is the collections management facility for the Science Museum Group and the Science Museum Library & Archives. Overview The Science Museum originally took ownership of the 545-acre forme ...

, which houses the group's large-object storage and library.

Early history

The airfield opened on 1 April 1940. It was used for the assembly and storage of aircraft during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

. The following units were here at some point: *

No. 15 Maintenance Unit RAF The following is a list of Royal Air Force Maintenance Units (MU). The majority of MUs were previously Equipment Depots (ED), Storage Depots (SD) and Aircraft Storage Units (ASU)s. No. 1 MU – No. 100 MU No. 101 MU – No. 200 MU No ...

* No. 41 Group Test Pilots Pool *

No. 76 Maintenance Unit RAF The following is a list of Royal Air Force Maintenance Units (MU). The majority of MUs were previously Equipment Depots (ED), Storage Depots (SD) and Aircraft Storage Units (ASU)s. No. 1 MU – No. 100 MU No. 101 MU – No. 200 MU No ...

No. 88 Gliding School RAF This is a list of Royal Air Force glider units. Gliding Schools +data 1-100 100-200 200-700 Volunteer Gliding Schools +data Other Glider units +data * Home Command Gliding Instructors School became Home Command Gliding Centre becam ...

* Maintenance Command Jet Training Flight Control of RAF Wroughton was handed over to the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against Fr ...

and it became the Royal Naval Aircraft Yard Wroughton in 1972.

RAF Princess Alexandra Hospital

RAF Hospital Wroughton was part of the station and stood near the eastern boundary of the site, about west of Chiseldon. The RAF General Hospital (as it was known) opened on 14 June 1941 and by the end of March 1944 its bed capacity was 1,000. Wroughton continued as a General Hospital treating military patients, and from 1958 took NHS cases as well to relieve backlogs in the Swindon area. Following a visit to the hospital by Princess Alexandra on 4 July 1967, the Queen conferred the prefix "Princess Alexandra's" on the hospital on 4 October 1967. The hospital was the primary destination for returning casualties of the

Falklands War The Falklands War ( es, link=no, Guerra de las Malvinas) was a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over two British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and its territorial ...

in 1982. When the hostages from Beirut were released in August 1991, Wg Cdr

Gordon Turnbull Gordon Turnbull is a British psychiatrist and expert on post traumatic stress disorder. He is the lead trauma consultant at the Nightingale Hospital in London, visiting professor at the University of Chester, and Consultant Advisor in Psychiatr ...

, a psychiatrist based at Wroughton, with his team, debriefed John McCarthy, Terry Waite and Jackie Mann and provided the counselling necessary to ease them back into freedom. RAF Princess Alexandra Hospital memorial

RAF Princess Alexandra Hospital memorial

The hospital closed on 31 March 1996 as part of the Conservative Government's defence cuts at the end of the cold war. The hospital was demolished in 2004 and the site, called Alexandra Park, used for housing and a conference centre; a memorial commemorates the former hospital.

Science Museum at Wroughton

The large-object storage of the

Science Museum A science museum is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, industry and industrial machinery, etc. Modern trends in ...

has been at Wroughton since 1979.

Current use

In 2016 a 50 MW

solar farm Solar may refer to: Astronomy * Of or relating to the Sun ** Solar telescope, a special purpose telescope used to observe the Sun ** A device that utilizes solar energy (e.g. "solar panels") ** Solar calendar, a calendar whose dates indicate ...

was completed on about 67 hectares of the airfield, with over 150,000

solar panel A solar cell panel, solar electric panel, photo-voltaic (PV) module, PV panel or solar panel is an assembly of photovoltaic solar cells mounted in a (usually rectangular) frame, and a neatly organised collection of PV panels is called a photo ...

s. This was a joint project of Public Power Solutions (a commercial arm of Swindon Borough Council) and the Science Museum Group. From 2016 to 2019, the television series ''

The Grand Tour ''The Grand Tour'' is a British motoring television series, created by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, James May and Andy Wilman, made for Amazon exclusively for its online streaming service Amazon Prime Video, and premiered on 18 November ...

'' operated their test track on the north end of the airfield, with the track encircling part of the Science Museum's storage facilities. In 2010,

Defence Estates Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) is an operating arm of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in the United Kingdom, which is responsible for the built and rural estate. Its Chief Executive is Graham Dalton. History The DIO was formed in 2011 i ...

stated that the Ministry of Defence still owned some 4.22 hectares of the site, where two linked hangar-type buildings were used by the Directorate of Naval Recruiting.

References

External links