Wem
Note: This map only shows the position of Wem within the UK. If anybody can provide more exact information regarding this site, or rather sites, this advice will be most welcome.
WEM: Temporary aerodrome
Operated by: ‘Jack’ Brereton (1912), Berkshire Aviation Co (1922)
Location: Isn’t acquiring a degree of knowledge a wonderful thing? It changes completely how you see things in general and history in particular. Below are some early notes I made about the nature of flying sites in the vicinity of WEM.
“This, (the later Berkshire Aviation Co listing), is intriguing because NEWTOWN is also listed as a venue used by ‘Jack’ Brereton yet NEWTOWN is just a small village alongside and just N of the B5063 2.5nm NW of WEM. It seems very hard to believe that two separate venues were being operated so close together at that time so perhaps NEWTOWN was the actual site used for flying in the Wem area?”
As you can see my reasoning was still entirely blinkered by post WW2 thinking and practise at best. I was thinking in terms of an ‘established’ flying site. I had yet to learn that some so called regional airports even in the 1930s were nothing more than a rented field and a windsock with many private ‘farm’ strips today having vastly superior facilities! I now know that in those days any farmer offering a better deal for use of a suitable field would invariably get the ‘contract’ to host a flying event.
Very often these companies would switch allegiances using other fields in a particular vicinity depending on the best commercial agreement. Indeed, there are examples of flying sites in those days being established in adjacent fields or “across the road”. There are even examples of farmers making an agreement to ‘rent’ a field in advance but when the date came to use it, the operator found the field ploughed and/or sowed!
As might be expected, many farmers weren’t too familiar with the demands required of a flying venue and anway, (probably quite rightly in some cases), might not have entirely trusted these “new fangled” aviation enterprises invariably operating on a “shoestring budget”. It really is a fascinating subject the more you look into it.
Period of operation: 1912 & 1st to 13th January 1922
NOTES: WEM was another venue for the Berkshire Aviation Co in 1922 but records appear to show that ‘Jack’ Brereton, who was employed by the Blackburn Aeroplane & Motor Co to test fly and demonstrate their Mercury III monoplane, displayed at NEWTOWN.
We'd love to hear from you, so please scroll down to leave a comment!
Leave a comment ...
Copyright (c) UK Airfield Guide
