On a mid-February day my Dad decided to take me out and show me a pile of rubble in a field. This is a fairly typical offer I get from anyone asking if I'd like a day out. Obviously, I accepted. On this occasion, the pile of rubble was associated a decoy airfield that used to sit on the outskirts of Cottenham in Cambridgeshire.
If you follow Broad Lane out of the village it seemingly disappears off into the fen. This was our destination, apparently. At a point along the 'road' where two concrete blocks sit to the right, a footpath runs alongside a dyke between two fields. This is where our pile of rubble was.
The decoy airfield was built during the Second World War to divert the attention of German planes away from nearby airfields of RAF Oakington & RAF Waterbeach. It was a simple affair. Four inch posts were set into the ground to simulate a runway. Each of the posts had a hurricane lamp fixed to the top, and each night a man would come from Oakington airfield to light them.
It seems to have been effective as a number of bombs were dropped around the site and there is even a story of a British plane trying to land there.
Later the hurricane lamps were replaced with electric lamps, with a bunker built to house the generator & controls. Our pile of rubble is all that's left of the generator house. Occasionally, still, wires and cables are ploughed up by the farmer, and a bit of this has found its way into Dad's spare room.
The view toward Cottenham from the airfield.
///quite.crusted.overt
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