Aeroplane Monthly and Bicester airfield

Has anyone seen the article in this months Aeroplane Monthly (page 10) regarding the preservation plans for Bicester in particular and other airfields in general.
It seems the Historic Aircraft Association, Vintage Aircraft Club, and a group I was unaware of called the General Aviation Awareness Council have come up with a scheme to save this historic site intact. Seems they are trying to resist changes in planning laws for the use of some airfields as brown field, and eco town sites.
Sounds like a good scheme and possibly the best chance for us of preserving a major, and classic, aviation site intact.

What do people here think?

If anyone is interested I will try and scan and post the article.

Yeah I read that too. Was quite surprised to hear that Bicester is a "timewarp" with very little changed since it was put into care. Would love to see a period airfield open to the public.

C'mon people, is this not worthy of disscussion!

I had thought the reference to Bicester was to do with this Campaign to save the airfield
From the Oxford Mail archive( archive.oxfordmail.net/2006/9/26/106587.html ) first published Tuesday 26th Sep 2006.

'A NATIONAL campaign has been launched to preserve Bicester's airfield and turn it into a major tourist attraction.

Voluntary organisation Bomber Command Heritage, known as BCH, has started an online petition in support of the former RAF Bicester - and has already collected more than 1,000 signatures.

It wants to see the site, off Skimmingdish Lane, used as a Second World War-themed heritage attraction.

Chairman Martin Jones said BCH was part of a consortium which bid for the site two years ago.

He said BCH was approached by a group of developers who wanted to offer a museum on the site as part of their package.

But the deal fell through - and now BCH is hoping to push the museum idea forward on its own.

Mr Jones said BCH initially hoped to use one or two buildings on the base's technical site as a small museum.

But he added: "If we secured enough support it could actually be turned into a World War Two-themed tourist attraction. It would be a tremendous asset for Bicester and the local area. Ultimately it could be a major UK museum."

He said the site could include vintage aircraft displays, flight simulators, a restaurant and a narrow-gauge railway.

He said: "The technical site has been derelict for a long time, mothballed since basically the 1980s. Bicester is a unique opportunity to capture a moment in time. It sounds far-fetched but it's actually quite do-able if we get the support."

Mr Jones said he hoped to use local support to gain leverage with the Ministry of Defence, which owns the site but is hoping to sell it next year.

He added BCH also planned to apply for funding from organisations such as the Heritage Lottery Fund.

And he said although BCH's mission was to keep as much of the site preserved as possible, it would not rule out further collaboration with developers if that was the only option.

Mr Jones added Bicester's good transport links and shopping village made it a particularly good site for the project.

The base, which was built as a bomber station in 1924, was listed by the Government last December after English Heritage labelled it "Britain's best pre-war airfield".

The airfield was earmarked for about 1,500 houses, but after it was designated as a conservation area in 2002, the houses were allocated to land between Bicester and Chesterton.

Chesterton resident David Chapman is leading a campaign calling on Cherwell District Council to reconsider the decision.

He said: "I have spoken to a lot of RAF and ex-RAF personnel and they can't understand why RAF Bicester should be preserved. It has no historical value. I can't see the need for a museum."

To support the campaign see: www.bc-heritage.org/bicester or write to Bomber Command Heritage, c/o 29 Eden Road, Gossops Green, Crawley, West Sussex, RH11 8LZ.

Campaign organisers said they would also be interested in receiving anecdotes and photographs of the site pre-1945.

www.bc-heritage.org/bicester/

All the site needs is one of those mass produced airfield marker stone thingies

I think it was quite telling that when the Daily Telegraph publicised this, at the end of the article it gave contact details for its own appeal for a Bomber Command memorial in London, or something like that, rather than the Bicester appeal, which had been the subject of the article.

RAF Bicester: the best preserved Bomber Command aerodrome NOT to have been used by Bomber Command during the war.

This is what might happen: The MoD own the site, but don’t have the spare cash to maintain any of the buildings. We are in a recession and no profit orientated developer (which means all developers) will touch former RAF Bicester because the buildings are listed and the overall site is within a conservation area. So what happens is: nothing.

Forget about a themed museum, unless you’ve just won the lottery yourself. Otherwise, where’s the money going to come from? Yes, let’s have a small museum, but where’s the money going to come from? Nothing will happen to the site probably before 2012, though I wouldn’t be surprised if the London Olympics will be asking for additional cash from The Lottery to pay for the overspend well after the games are over. Also The Lottery do not give money to new museums, especially those employing original, tired old structures. Now demolish RAF Bicester and build a landmark, iconic, conceptual structure designed my Lord Foster and you might be onto a winner, but your primary objective is the preservation of RAF Bicester, both in structure and character…

The best and only option is mixed use, but every building will have to pay its way. H Blocks can be converted into offices or business units or even apartments, but with them being listed: Good Luck!!! Listing is only good for one thing: to stop a building from being demolished, and even that isn’t true (delisting). The problem is that listed structures can be uneconomically to restore, and what is uneconomical in property redevelopment is usually shunned by most developers.

At RAF Bicester, the more structures you can reuse the better your chances, BUT you will need to build maybe 200 to 300 new houses just to balance the books. No new-build equals no preserved RAF Bicester.

Thing is, the MoD will want top dollar for the site, which means houses and nothing but houses, but current restrictions (statutory protection and conservation area status) will probably prevent this from happening. Then again, wait long enough and with a bit of luck from our friends Mother Nature and Johnny Vandal and any structure will become unsafe. Unsafe building begets delisting begets demolition. It happens!

Maybe I’m being too realistic. But forget about creating an all singing - all dancing heritage centre with guides dressed in RAF uniform and preserved vehicles placed strategically around the site. Money is king and there is no money in preserving RAF Bicester as a living museum. Personally I wouldn’t mind if the site was cleared for housing and nothing but housing. Firstly, the site is a poor representative of a “Bomber Command” airfield (in that it wasn’t used for that purposed during the war), and secondly English Heritage have done more harm than good in placing such emphasis on this airfield, while other sites and structures have been left to the mercy of developers (yes, Driffield included but don’t forget several other airfields too).

Please prove me wrong, but only with the demise of RAF Bicester will everyone finally realise how ineffective efforts have been so far. Maybe then can we progress and salvage what remains of our aerodrome heritage. But it isn’t going to happen is it? I mean, how important is our aerodrome heritage to the general [voting] public? How do you prove what we hold dear is important? And how do effect change? When was our aviation heritage in the national news?

If you want to save Bicester you need to find tenants for the buildings. This means engineering firms, car mechanics and small, rural businesses wishing to relocate. The hangars would work as storage centres for documents. If you can prove that moving any business to the site would be profitable for the tenant as well as the developer then you have won. Target businesses who would financially benefit from relocation to the aerodrome. Are their current premises (or rather the land on which it stands) more valuable if cleared for housing?

Is their space for sporting facilities that could be funded from The Lottery or the EU? What grants are available for developing the site? If you go down the “let’s turn RAF Half Penny Field into a living museum or heritage centre” route you will fail in the same way that others have failed to buy RAF Watton or RAF North Coates. Prove that preservation through sympathetic redevelopment can be profitable and you have won.