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City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000
& Sport and the Heritage Lottery Fund, which will
help secure the aerodromes long term future. We aim to
be part of that future by taking some of the first coach
parties to visit the site as part of our new day trip
Men With Splendid Hearts: The Great War in Essex
described on the next page.
Below: Claude Ridley in his Morane Bullett in France
serving with 60 Squadron Royal Flying Corps.
ball when the site was scheduled to be sold off for a
caravan park. Businessman Russell Savory (photographed
for the Daily Telegraph above) was looking for somewhere
to house the workshops to build his RS Performance sports
cars. With his then business partner Steve Wilson, he
bought the site for £500,000, asked the local council to put
a preservation order on the remaining 22 buildings and set
about saving them with a growing team of volunteers.
This was definitely a
Downton Abbey
sort of world. The
Officers Mess had indoor bathrooms and a special room for
the silver while the lower ranks slept in tents and made do
with outside privies. To ensure that dignity was maintained
the ladies hostel for women communications and domestic
workers was built with windows six feet above the ground.
In October 2013 Stow Maries Aerodrome received a grant
of £1.5 million from the Department for Culture, Media
