Essendine - an airfield that never was

[Carnaby]

Reputedly just in Rutland at the time. It now seems to be in Lincs, but on the Leics border.

RAFM Hendon has a site plan for the bomb stores 11230/42 - standard bomber station.

It would be in these woods.

The airfield was to the south of the bomb dump. Note that Braceborough Grange would be well inside the perimeter track and between two runways. The Lodge was just outside the airfield boundary.

Banthorpe Woods would have gone, and the Carlby to Greatford road would have been closed.

[PNK]

I wonder why it was only the bomb dump drawings were kept? It was the same for Donna Nook.

[MikeO]

Essendine was stated as being in Rutland in Air Ministry docs and Kesteven, Lincs in some of those of the Ministry of Agriculture! The Min of Ag were kept very much in the picture with WW2 airfield development. Essendine was one of the many prospective locations that the Air Ministry had to relinquish after the December 1942 review of national building priorities. Previously it been on the "cleared" list and was awaiting construction.

The Air Ministry opened individual files on each prospective site but it seems there was a big cull at the end of the war. It's perhaps surprising that anything on Essendine survived

[PETERTHEEATER]

The planners seem to have found a good site in which the necessary bomb stores could be laid out logically and efficiently. The 1123C/42 Bomb Stores drawing shows the airfield boundary as 'Existing AM boundary' implying that the land had already been appropriated for the airfield before deciding to add a bomb store.