Almost inevitable I am afraid.

As an ex-BAE Filton employee for nearly 10 years from 1984 to 1994 I have watched the following progressively happen

F-111 Depot Maintenance Contract Completed
A320 wing equipping moved to Chester
Rolls Royce Flight Test Department Closed down
VC10 tanker conversions finished
A300 Cargo Conversion programme came to an end
BAE 146 storage moved to Kemble
Air Lvery moved to Manchester
MK Airlines ceased trading

All less movements to cover the large costs of maintaining the airfield and fire cover.

It could have been so very different if efforts had been put into developing commercial or freight traffic after Concorde. This was long before the developments at Lulsgate and the building of Bradley Stoke. Once land had been sold for housing development this was certainly the begining of the end

At least now I wont be told off by my wife for not concentrating on the traffic as I go over the Filton Flyover on the A38 and look to see what is on the airfield

Thanks for those and it is good to note how many are preserved.

Second that, same a few more did not survive as there would be a few gaps plugged

Barracuda, Firebrand, Sea Hornet, Horsa to name a few

XG544 was preserved and displayed at the long defunct Torbay Aviation Museum, I believe it is possibly the one which went to a private owner (possibly same location as Lightnng?) in east Cornwall.
However I have never seen recent info or pics of it though and it could have moved on since.

It was indeed at the home of Roy Flood of Castle Motors along with his second Lightning. I think it was Lower Tremar. Unfortunately on the day that I had a look at them with Roy’s blessing I did not have my camera.

It has always been a bit of a mystery as to where it went

Re the Botswana Dove, at Lulsgate it was already in a sorry state.

The photograph in the link is definately Speke. Not doubting your recollection but only putting the pieces together, maybe it had already been spares recovered at Speke and then moved to Lulsgate by road, what date was your sighting ?

Incidently a small part of the aircraft is still around and was found at Speke

see here http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?p=1305258&highlight=dove+speke#post1305258

It is an ex-Australian Aircraft (N4-944) as was exported to the USA in 1971

It is still in Oregon with Merle Maine here is a link to last years airshow

http://www.ontarioairfaire.org/Merle_s_Warbirds.php

There are also a couple of photos of the aircraft in 2008 on this set

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bluedharma/5172261667/in/set-72157612555078845/

It is worth flicking through the set as he has a quite incredible collection

I believe it was airworthy when it went to Merle

the Dove I was referring to was A2-ZFM and I am sure it was blue and white.

I have found one photograph of the aircraft here http://redalan747.tripod.com/id210.htm well worth having a look at his other photos

It is captioned “The cause of much excitement in 1971 was the arrival of this Botswana registered DH104 Dove – A2-ZFM – seen here in the old Vernair Hangar.

A2-ZFM history is as follows

C/N 04409

21/01/53 The aircraft was registered as G-AMXY.
18/09/61 To Shackelton Aviation
03/01/63 Nuclear Power Group.
XJ323
16/01/69 to Zambia
9J-AAE
Aug 1970 The aircraft was re-registered to Botswana Airways as A2-ZFM.
Apr 1971 The aircraft was sold to new owners in the UK.
Dove arrived 16.06.71 for spares recovery, eventually scrapped with Vernier Air Transport at Speke.

From http://cnapg.net/dove.htm plus G-INFO

So it finally met it end at Speke. Therefore if it was at Lulsgate it could not have been there long

and what happened to the Devon ??

It was scrapped and the cockpit went to Pershore

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jsmorgan/1127460541/