East Heslerton
EAST HESLERTON: Military Landing Ground
(Later civil aerodrome, aka GANTON - see seperate entry)
Military user: RAF 76 (Home Defence) Sqdn (BE.2s, BE.12s and, in 1918, Bristol F.2Bs)
Location: Near East Heslerton village on the A64 about 8 to 9nm ENE of Malton
Period of operation: 1918 to 1919
NOTES: Contemporary records state the Landing Ground was 2½ miles from Weaverthorpe railway station but Weaverthorpe seems to have disappeared from modern maps. Given the task in hand I have usually tried to use a combination of Ordnance Survey and modern road maps to provide an approximate location in many cases such as this site. To attempt something more accurate is usually impossible - indeed many historians often devote years of detailed research to identifying exact locations and extracting the detailed history - bless them.
I think it’s wonderful such people exist and I do of course owe a great debt to them. If it wasn’t for Mike Davis of Cross & Cockade for example, lending me his ‘master file’ involving some twenty years of research (and that was many years ago) I’d probably never have discovered EAST HESLERTON and many other WW1 Landing Grounds.
In fairness Mike Davis had identified with much precision almost all the WW1 sites, giving the 'Lat & Long' position. However, for right or wrong, for the purposes of this 'Guide' - given the very wide remit where very often exact locations are not known - I decided to give mostly just general locations in many cases - but also inviting people to provide more exact positions. This was very much my vision for this 'Guide' - inviting people from all walks of life to get involved. And, I am very pleased to say, even in the early days of 2015, it seems to be working.
t watson
This comment was written on: 2019-06-05 22:32:07psition. SE 9336 7688, N54 10 43 W00 34 17 aprox. original site for scarboruogh areo club, 70 plus years ago. (father was engineree there befor joining RAF, club house now snooty fox restererant, hanger is low yellow building, at back of it was control on rased platform, (was still there 30 years ago) 1 runway possibly north southish on sherbun side of site from memory (was only a nipper then) hanger now boothby car sales, still have some pics some were of it.
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