Building an airfield

Transforming a sleepy part of rural Dorset into an active wartime airfield took just under a year to complete. This map shows the location as it appeared in the 1930s, a small plateau of land with an Ordnance Survey trig point at 274 feet elevation. Bang in the middle of the proposed airfield was Crook Farm run by Edward Harding who had bought the surrounding land from the Crichel estate after the First World War.

That farm would be destroyed, footpaths lost and the tranquil landscape above Tarrant Rushton transformed from arable fields and pasture into a huge class A airfield, its three concrete runways prepared for some of the most important airborne operations of the Second World War. Accommodation for up to three thousand service men and women would be built in the surrounding woods with all the infrastructure their presence would require.

Learn more about how this happened by clicking below.