Did someone mention my name? 😀
I would like to find photos too – the best info I have ever found in books has been James Goodson saying “Great Sampford was anything but!”, and a brief mention by Geoffrey Wellum in “First Light”. The latter gentleman was kind enough to send a short reply to my letter stating that although he was there only briefly before he went to Malta, he remembered it in rather better ways than Goodson!
There was an article on it in an old Air Britain publication – there is a copy on eBay at the moment (which is how I know ) and it’s MEMEME! watching it so hands off (tantrum mode off…) Unless of course it’s another forum member bidding in which case we might be able to come to an agreement if you read this?
Where is Wright’s Yard? There is/was a mushroom farm between the site itself and Radwinter which is all WW2-type asbestos buildings, though I suspect these were moved together later. There’s also a garden nearby with a large air-raid shelter.
The airfield map can be obtained from the RAF Museum, where I got mine. Interestingly, the area was a blank on the large scale OS Map (the old equivalent of what is now the Explorer series) I bought in the late 1980s, despite the airfield being out of use by VE-day.
When I first visited in about 1990 the ditches across the flying area had only just been reinstated, and there were a lot of odd bits of Sommerfeld(?) tracking lying round that had obviously been missed when the runways were lifted. I don’t know about buildings, but the old guardhouse still survives (you would have driven past the road it is on – easy to spot once you know where it is because it branches offa little country lane, but is very wide with kerbstones!) and is now a house. There may be other buildings surviving in Gt Brockholds farmyard, which I didn’t nose round back then. I think I’ve mentioned before that the frame of one of the (two?) blister hangars survives, just off the Thaxted-Broxted road on the right.
Anything I’ve missed?
Adrian
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