RAF Atherstone, latterly RAF Stratford, was a satellite base for RAF Wellesbourne Mountford near Stratford-Upon-Avon in Warwickshire (that base being the location which came to prominence recently after the Avro Vulcan overshot the runway!). It opened in 1941 as RAF Atherstone, being located next to the small hamlet of Atherstone-on-Stour, and was a training facility used by the No.22 Operational Training Unit RAF. It's name changed to RAF Stratford in 1942 after the RAF realised nobody could find the sparsely populated parish, with no railway station, with the result being more than a few servicemen posted to the base mistakenly ended up at the much larger town of Atherstone 40 miles away near Tamworth. During most of 1943 No.312 Ferry Training Unit flew Vickers Wellington bombers from the base, after being stationed at RAF Wellesbourne Mountford during that period. In March 1944 the base was transferred back to the No.22 OTU with their own compliment of 81 Wellingtons, although they left not long after with the base then brought under control of the Signals Flying Unit from RAF Honiley until it closed in 1945, being placed under a care and maintenance status.
The story locally goes that the airfield was sited in the wrong place, as the whole area is on a hill which left the runway on a steep slope, so it's no wonder the base closed at the end of the war. There were numerous runway overshoots in it's time as a base including one Wellington that ended up coming to rest on the railway line at the end of the runway and then was subsequently hit by a train.
Nowadays the site is a mix of farmland and industrial units, there are four buildings and a water tower left over from it's days as a base. Two of the buildings are little more than brick shells being used as storage by one of the companies that occupies part of the land, one is the former decontamination bunker and the other is a larger building which looked to have been partially used as animal pens at some point. The tower would be climbable with a bit of effort but there are numerous mobile phone masts and dishes on the top due to it being on the aforementioned hill.
The only reference I can find to this place on here is a post from way back in 2008 which only showed the decontamination bunker building, so hopefully this gives some more idea of what's left - I love these old RAF base remains and I always enjoy photographing them. The old murals depicting the story of Cinderella in the larger building were certainly an unexpected find.
The wheeled item in the last photo I at first didn't think much of, however a closer inspection lead to the discovery of a makers plaque which revealed it to be an Avro Vulcan Main Fuselage Jack - none of us could work out how or why it was there, unless it had come from the nearby RAF Wellesbourne Mountford where they were indeed based at some point in the past.
Thanks for looking
The story locally goes that the airfield was sited in the wrong place, as the whole area is on a hill which left the runway on a steep slope, so it's no wonder the base closed at the end of the war. There were numerous runway overshoots in it's time as a base including one Wellington that ended up coming to rest on the railway line at the end of the runway and then was subsequently hit by a train.
Nowadays the site is a mix of farmland and industrial units, there are four buildings and a water tower left over from it's days as a base. Two of the buildings are little more than brick shells being used as storage by one of the companies that occupies part of the land, one is the former decontamination bunker and the other is a larger building which looked to have been partially used as animal pens at some point. The tower would be climbable with a bit of effort but there are numerous mobile phone masts and dishes on the top due to it being on the aforementioned hill.
The only reference I can find to this place on here is a post from way back in 2008 which only showed the decontamination bunker building, so hopefully this gives some more idea of what's left - I love these old RAF base remains and I always enjoy photographing them. The old murals depicting the story of Cinderella in the larger building were certainly an unexpected find.
The wheeled item in the last photo I at first didn't think much of, however a closer inspection lead to the discovery of a makers plaque which revealed it to be an Avro Vulcan Main Fuselage Jack - none of us could work out how or why it was there, unless it had come from the nearby RAF Wellesbourne Mountford where they were indeed based at some point in the past.
Thanks for looking
