Foxwarren

This was a WW2 dispersed production site for Vickers-Armstrongs at Brooklands – in fact there were three separate facilities there one of which had a hangar where prototypes such as the 432 ‘Tin Mossie’ and Windsor were first built and assembled but as there was no airfield there, these were then dismanlted and taken by road first to Farnborough and later Wisley after that airfield opened.

The site also has associations with the bouncing bomb, the Viking, Valiant and V1000 prototypes as it remained in use until the mid 1950s. Today only the hangar-like Machine Shop building survives at the corner of Redhill Road and Byfleet Road and has been the home of the Cobham Bus Museum since the 1970s(?). Silvermere Lake (now part of the Silvermere golf course complex is just South of the bus museum and saw some of Barnes Wallis’ early catapault trials with small scale bouncing bomb models.

Many thanks for this info TT – and for your website link which I shall use for future ref.

Good luck with both hangar and aeroplanes.

CL5

Out of interest what type of hangar is this Philip and what is its history? It looks a bit like one that used to be at Cranfield with the late Sandy Topen and more recently Tim Manna. Others similar were at Thorpe Park in the 1970s/80s and I think the gliding club at North Weald still have one. Unless I’m mistaken, the structure is a 1970s approximate replica of a WW1 Bessoneau hangar. Good luck with repairing and maintaining it anyway!

Interesting question – do you have more details of delivery dates, ferry pilots and where these Hurricanes were delivered from in the UK?

Thanks for that guys….and I see from the News section of the D&GAM website that there is indeed a situation with the Museum’s tenure at the former RAF Tinwald Downs. Worth keeping an eye on this one perhaps.

Not as far as I know…..there was also a Vickers Viking found underwater too (unless this was the same discovery) but nothing more happened with that either.

Interesting – and there are some good photos of this control tower on the increasingly comprehensive UK Control Towers website. It certainly has been carefully restored, with only a few noticeable compromises for Health & Safety.

Anyone got any pics of the VC10 in its new temporary position on the hardstanding where the Valiant once stood?