RAF Wroughton is a former

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the Air force, air and space force of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. It was formed towards the end of the World War I, First World War on 1 April 1918, on the merger of t ...

airfield near

Wroughton Wroughton is a large village and civil parish in northeast Wiltshire, England. It is part of the Borough of Swindon and lies along the A4361 road, A4361 between Swindon and Avebury; the road into Swindon crosses the M4 motorway between junc ...

, in

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated to Wilts) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It borders Gloucestershire to the north, Oxfordshire to the north-east, Berkshire to the east, Hampshire to the south-east, Dorset to the south, and Somerset to ...

, England, about south of

Swindon Swindon () is a town in Wiltshire, England. At the time of the 2021 Census the population of the built-up area was 183,638, making it the largest settlement in the county. Located at the northeastern edge of the South West England region, Swi ...

. Ministry of Defence aviation activity ceased in 1972. The airfield now belongs to the

Science Museum Group The Science Museum Group (SMG) consists of five British museums: * The Science Museum in South Kensington, London * The Science and Industry Museum in Manchester * The National Railway Museum in York * The Locomotion Museum (formerly the Na ...

and is home to the

National Collections Centre The Science and Innovation Park is a research and cultural site near Swindon, England. Part of the Science Museum Group, the Park hosts a range of research and development activity, filming and photography projects, storage for culture sector ...

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

Early history

The site was acquired for an airfield in 1937 and the airfield opened on 1 April 1940. It was used for the assembly and storage of aircraft during the Second World War. The following units were here at some point: * No. 15 Maintenance Unit RAF * No. 41 Group Test Pilots Pool * No. 76 Maintenance Unit RAF * No. 88 Gliding School RAF * Maintenance Command Jet Training Flight Control of RAF Wroughton was handed over to the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...

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 () was a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over two British Overseas Territories, British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and Falkland Islands Dependenci ...

in 1982. When hostages from Beirut were released in August 1991, Wg Cdr Gordon Turnbull, a psychiatrist based at Wroughton, with his team, debriefed John McCarthy,

Terry Waite Sir Terence Hardy Waite (born 31 May 1939) is a British human rights activist and author. Waite was the Assistant for Anglican Communion Affairs for the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, in the 1980s. As an envoy for the Church of ...

and Jackie Mann and provided the counselling necessary to ease them back into freedom. 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. Street names in the development reflect the site's history, including Normandy and Falklands Roads named after battles, and Whittingham Drive named after RAF physician Harold Whittingham.

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 (manufacturing), industry and Outline of industrial ...

has been at Wroughton since 1979.

Current use

In 2016 a 50 MW

solar farm A photovoltaic power station, also known as a solar park, solar farm, or solar power plant, is a large-scale grid-connected photovoltaic power system (PV system) designed for the supply of merchant power. They are different from most building ...

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

solar panel A solar panel is a device that converts sunlight into electricity by using photovoltaic (PV) cells. PV cells are made of materials that produce excited electrons when exposed to light. These electrons flow through a circuit and produce direct ...

s. This was a joint project of Public Power Solutions (a commercial arm of Swindon Borough Council) and the

. 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, for Amazon Prime Video, and premiered on 18 November 2016. The programme was devised in the wake of the depar ...

'' 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 Mike Green. History The DIO was formed in 2011 in ...

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