Monday. Start the week

Simple pleasures

Unless you happen to know about the Film Studios there, you’ve probably never heard of the place called Elstree.

It’s a village 15 miles or so north-west of central London. When I knew it in the 1930s it was a truly rural, countryside area, chiefly a place of narrow, twisty lanes edged by tall hedgerows. Today its lanes are still edged with high hedges and you can imagine yourself in deepest rural England. But much building of housing estates has gone on and the hedges today can hide a multitude of bricks and mortar.

Only five miles from our house in Bushey its airfield was the ideal Saturday afternoon bike-ride for a schoolfriend and me. And by ‘airfield’ I mean an actual field with one short landing strip, a well-rolled and hardened strip of level soil. Dotted about were a few sheds acting as hangars.

Within shouting distance there was another attraction, Elstree Reservoir, a wide stretch of water edged by trees and grassland. Small sailing craft and rowing dinghies were always there, in fine weather and foul, with men calling themselves ‘skippers’ and frequently proving themselves to be quite otherwise.

But the reservoir was not for us, in spite of its many attractions for small boys like the deliciously muddy banks and shallow water that made it ideal for sailing one’s model yacht. Compared with dangerous, noisy, daredevil aeroplanes that might crash at any moment, sailing dinghies were dreary and predictable. They moved slowly and went nowhere. (Twenty years later I was to discover otherwise; every year had a fortnight reserved for sailing 30ft sloops on the Norfolk Broads and teaching others to sail.)

Our viewpoint for watching the airfield activity could not have been better. Just off one of the lanes, through trees and on to a grassy space, was the wooden perimeter fence; as I remember it, low and widely-spaced posts with a single rail. We could see the entire field, sheds and all.

With a couple of slices of fruit cake and a bottle of lemonade between us we would flop down onto the grass close by the railings, and just watch. Planes many years old would be active, biplanes that had served in the years of the 1914-18 war. But newer types like the Gipsy Moth were there, too. The racing types, the trainers, all were there. Not many were actually based there; they would arrive and depart mounted on long trailers, their wings folded or removed, and towed by powerful cars.

The take-offs were not exciting. It was the landings that had the attraction and, on our arrival, the wind-sock was the first thing we looked at. There was only one runway, running roughly east-west; when the wind veered it made all the difference to the difficulty of the job. A sudden sideways gust would send these lightweight and mostly canvas-and wood aircraft staggering. We watched the pilots, mostly very efficient, coax their machines with stick and rudder until they were correctly lined-up, then gently sink them onto the strip. We hoped for the less-experienced; they achieved the most wonderfully dangerous landings, bouncing high as they hit ground and continuing to bounce as they raced nearer and nearer to the perimeter trees.

Elstree Airport, as it is now named, is today a busy recreation and training centre. There is still only the single landing strip but now it’s hard and white-lined. Look at the Google map and imagine it as it was, with us revelling in the sunshine, an excellent front-row view, a chunk of Mum’s rich currant cake and a bottle of pop.

Ah, nostalgia. What would I do without you?

(By the way, if you’re interested in the history and development of airfields round Britain have a look at Airport Information Exchange. Very helpful, they are. As their Dave Robinson told me, ‘. . . there's no greater knowledge base on UK Airfields than AiX’.)

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Text and illustration ©Paul Wigmore 2010

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