here - Bicester Heritage

B i c e s t e r h e r i t ag e
Ah!
Bicester!
On an old Oxfordshire RAF bomber base,
once-derelict buildings are being restored
and let out to classic car, bike and ’plane
specialists. Octane can’t keep away...
Words David Lillywhite // Photography Matt Howell
126 august 2014 OCTANE
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I
t sounded almost too good to be true. A
dedicated ‘village’ of classic car, motorcycle and
aeroplane specialists on an old RAF base, an hour
or so from London by road or rail, within an
hour-and-a-half of five international airports and
less than 30 minutes from Silverstone and its
associated ‘Motorsport Valley’.
We’ve watched developments closely over the
last year or so, trying not to be either overly cynical or naively
excited. Would it happen? Could it possibly turn out to be as
good as it sounds? A year on, the reality is looking even better
than the dream, and a visit to Bicester Heritage will get the
hairs on the back of your neck standing on end.
It helps that it’s situated on what was RAF Bicester, referred
to by Our Transport Heritage as ‘one of the finest examples of
an unmodified pre-war RAF station’. The first ever flight from
this location was on 19 August 1911; it became a military
airfield in 1916, was converted into a bomber base during the
1920s, expanded in the ’30s and was a maintenance station in
1945. It was gradually wound down into the 1970s, though the
US Air Force briefly made use of the
offices and equipped one of the hangars
as an emergency hospital in 1991.
How it has survived the attentions of
housing developers is little short of
miraculous – indeed, it came close in the
1990s, but locals protested and the site
was made a conservation area by the
district council. It was finally put up for
sale in 2009, attracting around a dozen
bidders. The Ministry of Defence was
keen for the site to be preserved, so the
Bicester Heritage team spent 1000 hours
preparing a bid document explaining its
intentions. It worked, and the 348-acre
site was secured for £3.4 million.
That seems a reasonable price on the face of it, and it must
help that there’s been a rent-paying glider club there since 1956.
But 19 of the 50-odd buildings are Grade II listed, most of the
buildings were semi-derelict, and there was no guarantee that
English Heritage would approve their conversion into
workshops, showrooms and offices – and even less certainty
that anyone would want to move into them. Bicester Heritage
is now looking at a ‘multi-million pound sum’ to bring the
place up to scratch.
It’s well underway. Drive through the gates and you’re
greeted on the right by the empty Station Offices, as yet
untouched, and on the left by the old Guard House, beautifully
restored. It’s currently home to the Bicester Heritage HQ, in
which we find director Dan Geoghegan and assistant Tiggy
Atkinson; the Estate Office, run by former Silverstone circuit
manager and Donington Park MD Brian Pallett; and Historic
Promotions, organisers of the Donington Historic Festival.
Ahead are three tree-lined avenues, heading off in the classic
RAF airbase ‘trident’ format, devised to enable ground crew to
head up the central spur directly to the airfield and air crew
and support up the outer spurs on hearing the scramble bell.
The scramble bell, incidentally, hangs from the porch of the
Guard House, but it’s not the original, which was presumed
missing-in-action until the local air cadets attended a recent
VSCC event at Bicester Heritage and announced that the bell
was in use as a doorstop in their HQ, having been donated
when the bomber base closed. It’s about to be reinstated.
Dan is our guide today, and we head up the left-hand spur
first, because this is where phase one of the development has
taken place. We pass the Fire Station, restored and close to
becoming one of the first ten buildings to be restored and
occupied, and then the Bore Hole Pump House, which Dan
jokingly – or perhaps not – suggests would make a great minibrewery, seeing as the water well is still workable.
Workmen are putting the finishing touches to the Power
House (pictured bottom right), where former Bonhams
employee Robert Glover has set up his new dealership,
specialising in sales of the best pre-war cars. There’s a Bentley
and a Bugatti inside, and Robert soon arrives with a potential
customer in a Sunbeam 20.9hp. Robert knows Dan through
VSCC racing, a common thread in the conversations to come.
The Power House has been beautifully restored, the roof
and iron rainware replaced, original
windows swapped for exact copies still
made by Crittall. Inside, the part-tiled
floor is far from perfect but it’s original
and important to save – though not as
important as the working sculpture
hanging over it: a wonderful six-tonne
crane, now perfectly restored.
We leave Robert to his next customer
and peer through the windows of the
adjoining building, which has been
converted into two fully equipped
apartments, available for rent to anyone
needing overnight accommodation. Dan
announces that he’ll live on-site, and
the air turns thick with jealous words.
We’ve skirted past the large fenced-off Main Stores building
to the right, just about to receive the attention of the builders,
and Dan is striding across the grass – quickly pointing out
three units that will soon receive glass fronts ready for their
new occupants, including trimmer Harry Fraser – and heads
for what he refers to as ‘the most expensive building on the
site in terms of cost per square foot’. The sign says ‘Technical
Latrines’ and is designated Unit 100, or ‘loo’ – who says the
RAF didn’t have a sense of humour? Inside, the toilets and
sinks are all period-correct, though rather more luxurious than
they’d have been originally, but what Dan is really excited
about is the combination of paint colours, all matched to the
original Ministry of Defence approved palettes of the time.
‘Our chairman [former research physicist Francis Galashan]
spent over 200 hours researching the right colours for the
entire site,’ he says, before naming each of those colours in a
stream of consciousness so fast that my notetaking fails to
keep up. I guarantee he’ll tell you if you ask.
Behind the latrines is a thug of a building that turns out to
have been the Power House, understandably hidden behind a
brutish anti-bomb perimeter wall. The thick steel armoured
doors have been prised open just enough for us to squeeze
‘Imagine nipping
from building
to building for
auto-electrician,
trimmer,
panelbeater...’
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The Inflammable Store, untouched for
decades except by local graffiti artists.
It’s surrounded by a bombproof wall
and thick armoured doors.
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through but we’re not the first to have eased our way in,
because the walls are liberally decorated with graffiti.
Underneath it are tiles, elegantly curved around the wall’s
internal buttresses and still exhibiting a surprising gloss.
These buildings seem almost unfeasibly well built, but then a
Lancaster bomber would have cost around £35,000 in its day,
approximately the price of 70 farms. Set against that, costcutting on the buildings would have seemed churlish.
Close by, four-cylinder vintage Bentley specialist Ewen
Getley is happily setting up his new coffee machine, the
finishing touch to his new workshop in The Engine Test
House. He’s sat it on the original thick concrete workbench,
yet another of those neat features that has thankfully survived
the decades. This place is full of them.
We’ve made our way across to the central spur road now,
and I’m picturing the air crew hanging around amidst these
wonderfully leafy, mature trees (over 300 of them across the
site) – until it’s pointed out that the English Elms, Beeches and
others would have been mere saplings at the time.
Still, it’s quite a view down through the middle of the site,
with two of the hangars visible at the far end. It would once
have been possible to see the airfield between the hangars but
the Fuel Tanker Shed was later built at the end of the central
spur, blocking the view. The shed’s days are numbered, for
there are bigger plans for the area, as we later find out…
What will be done with the great big office building (once
the Armoury and Lecture Rooms), I ask. ‘We’d like this to be
the club of clubs,’ replies Dan; ‘serviced offices for car clubs,
with a central switchboard, meeting rooms and even a roof
terrace.’ It makes sense.
Just before this ‘clubhouse’ there’s a horseshoe of storage
buildings forming a courtyard that has already proved to be
perfect for social gatherings. One of the units has been turned
into a glass-fronted ‘social space’, decorated with pictures of
the Bugatti Type 51s shot here for Octane a few months back
by today’s photographer Matt Howell. He can’t believe how
much the site has changed since then.
This will be the ‘artisans’s courtyard’, rented to craftsmen if
all goes to plan. Imagine being able to nip from building to
building for auto-electrician, trimmer, panelbeater, carpenter...
Threading past the adjacent Special Repair Shed takes us to
the right-hand spur. The buildings here are untouched as yet
but there’s less decay and dereliction than you might expect –
except for the old Works Service Building, which was attacked
by the ‘Bicester Arsonist’ back in the 1980s. I think he had an
off day though, because there’s not much damage. Dan points
out the Link Trainer [simulator] building (‘Wouldn’t it be great
to rent it to a race simulator company,’ he says), the Lubricant
Store (‘We need a classic oils outfit there’) and the Hucks
Starter Shed, which would have housed a Model T or Morris
Commercial used to start the plane engines (‘We have to get
one!’ exclaims Dan).
It’s time to – at last – check out those huge hangars. Two
were built in 1926 to house the bombers. They’re Type A
hangars, at 122ft wide and 249ft long utterly vast, but not as
vast as the two 150ft x 300ft Type Cs that were added in 1936.
It’s in one of these that Historit is based, run by Charlie
Morgan and Andrew Ferguson to allow storage of up to 500
cars at any one time. With a 10ft-thick concrete floor, walls
built to withstand bomb blasts and a massively engineered
roof designed to radiate heat gathered from the hot engines of
the bombers fresh from their latest missions, it’s an excellent
environment for the storage of classic cars (and bikes, military
vehicles, race transporters and double-decker buses, as current
incumbents prove). Temperature and humidity stays naturally
steady, regardless of weather. Engines are started once a
month and the cars exercised around the airfield perimeter
road within the £110-a-month cost.
It’s perhaps not surprising that the perimeter road isn’t so
very different from that on which Silverstone started (also
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The Bicester pioneers
Ten businesses are already in, and another ten
will be in by January 2015. Here are a few of the
people involved at the fledgling Bicester Heritage
daniel geoghegan ‘It’s hard not to fall in
love with this place,’ says Bicester Heritage
managing director Daniel. ‘I first saw it in
August 2012 and it sent shivers down my spine.
English Heritage, Cherwell District Council and
our local MP have been incredibly supportive.
As an experience, it’s been absolutely terrific.’
from an RAF base). This prompts talk of plans for the future.
‘We could join the two Type C hangars together with a
large atrium to create a permanent exhibition space and dealer
area,’ suggests Dan. ‘Customers could try the cars out on the
perimeter road without having to venture onto public roads.’
It seems like a great plan, perhaps a bit of dream, until we
head back to the office and there’s a neat architectural model
of exactly that. They’re serious about the atrium.
You must be wondering by now if all this is just pie in the
sky. We were. But take a look at the profiles of the team
members on the Bicester Heritage website: most are historic
car, bike or plane (or all three) enthusiasts but all have
years of experience in massive corporate projects, property
development, venture capital and heritage buildings
(including the historic thermal spa in Bath). Ten companies are
already on site or about to move in; another ten are booked to
move in by January 2015. A kilometre of water mains has been
laid down, and there’s already site-wide wifi. There’s an
aeroplane auction taking place the week after our visit, the
MPs of the All-Party Parliamentary Historic Vehicles Club
have driven through on a rally, and more events are planned.
So we’ll stick the Octane neck out and say that, however
crazily ambitious it seems, Bicester Heritage looks very
promising. Very promising indeed. End
134 august 2014 OCTANE
ewen getley moved his vintage Bentley
workshop, Kingsbury Racing Services, from
a nearby building in ‘the middle of nowhere’ to
Bicester Heritage three weeks before our visit.
‘There was no passing trade at my old place,’
he says. ‘I saw this and I thought, I’ve just got to
be here. I think it’s going to be good.’
andrew ferguson & charlie morgan
run car storage business Historit. ‘We want
owners to visit as often as possible,’ says
Charlie. ‘We have a clubroom so owners can
meet up and drive to an event together, and
cars can be dropped off any time, day or night.
And there are all these specialists on site!’
Harry FRASER used to sell wine but he’s
been retrimming cars as a hobby for years.
‘I’d always wanted to do this as a living,’ he
says, ‘but I was just waiting for the right
opportunity. When Bicester Heritage came
along I thought “Excellent, the perfect place to
be!” I should move into my own unit in August.’
robert glover has chosen Bicester for
the base of his new pre-war cars dealership.
‘Leaving the safety net of Bonhams to set up
on my own was fairly terrifying but it would be
more terrifying anywhere else. At least here
I’m not on my own – there’s already a network
of great people here. It’s a good feeling.’