This place was originally a WWI hospital, it was one of the first places to have women on site. Now very very derelict the land has been for sale for some years and on my most recent visit the land has been sold and is used for tree felling currently.
Raf tilstock airfield is further down the road than the hospital part and is now the base for a skydiving company.
This area started life in 1915 known simply as Tilstock airfield and was used as a training base by the British army. It had the capacity to hold 30,000 men to be trained in trench warfare. It was later used as a store for supplies and had its own railway depot which was a branch line on the Crewe and Shrewsbury railway.
As casualties mounted up, it became a hospital and also there was now a fully working army barracks. After the First world war ended the site was downgraded and stayed under the ownership of the british government to be used for army training purposes. At the outbreak of world war II the site was used as an internment camp for German and Austrian refugees and then was converted into a prisoner of war camp which finally closed on 4th October 1941. An airfield was constructed and this construction was complete in 1942 and was now known as Whitchurch heath until 1st June 1943 until the name Raf Tilstock was adopted. Between 1st September 1942 and 21st January 1946 the airfield was used by No.81 operational training unit and No 1665 Heavy conversion unit Royal air force for training of pilots and their crews on heavy bombers.
During the 1950’s the R.A.F used of this now non-operational airfield during weekends for liaison flights with royal artillery units.3 Original runways were in existence at RAF Tilstock but only one remains in use today. The runway is still used at weekends for skydiving. Skydivers have used this runway for practising since 1966.
http://www.spiritcheshire.co.uk/DisusedMilitaryAirbase.html
Hi there. This website is fantastic work! Well done. Do you have hi res images of the plans? I’d love to investigate a little more.
Hi, Andrew it will be on the interest somewhere as id have gotten it from there many years ago, unfortunately I do not have the original image due to a harddrive failed a couple of years after going! Sadly it also looks like the referenced website doesn’t exist anymore either, sorry I cant be of more help.