RAF Uxbridge
RAF Uxbridge was a Royal Air Force station in the London Borough of Hillingdon. It is best known as the headquarters of No. 11 Group RAF, which was responsible for the aerial defence of London and the south-east of England during the Battle of Britain. The station closed on 31 March 2010 as part of a reduction in the number of Ministry of Defence installations in the Greater London area.
About RAF Uxbridge in brief
RAF Uxbridge was a Royal Air Force station in the London Borough of Hillingdon. It is best known as the headquarters of No. 11 Group RAF, which was responsible for the aerial defence of London and the south-east of England during the Battle of Britain. The station closed on 31 March 2010 as part of a reduction in the number of Ministry of Defence installations in the Greater London area. Plans for redevelopment, consisting of a mixture of new residential and commercial properties and the retention of all listed buildings, were approved in January 2011. A footpath through the site that had closed in 1988 was reopened in 2011. The land around the river is mainly wooded and designated as greenbelt, and Hilleddon Golf Course borders the south of the station. The site was long a part of the estate ofHillingdon House, built as a hunting lodge in 1717 by the Duke of Schomberg, who staged regular hunts in the grounds. The British Government purchased the estate in 1915, with the intention of establishing a prisoner of war camp. The local population strongly opposed the plan, causing the government to relent, and the site instead became the Canadian Convalescent Hospital to care for troops evacuated from the front line during the First World War. A total of eight gun ranges were built along the River Pinn; one remains today. On 1 April 1918, the site came under control of the Royal Flying Corps, which had been formed that day by the amalgamation of the RAF and the Royal Naval Air Service.
The following month it became the first RAF station to receive a royal visit from King George V, and a detachment of RAF Recruits arrived from Halton Training Depot and RAF Halton. A small part of. the station incorporating the Battle. of Britain Bunker retains the RAF Ux bridge name and is owned by Hilling Don Council. The area around the site runs through the land from north to south, passing HillingDon House and the Battle Of Britain Bunker. The mansion was completely rebuilt after it burnt down in 1844 and later received a Grade II listing as a historic site. It was described as “a brick and stone building, partly stuccoed, with extensive outbuildings and ornamental gardens”. It was sold to Richard Henry Cox, grandson of Richard Cox, founder of the travel company Cox & Kings, in 1810. The Marchioness of Rockingham, widow of Prime Minister Charles Watson-Wentworth, bought the house in 1786 for £9,000 following her husband’s death and lived there until her own death in 1804. She left the estate to her stepsister Elizabeth, who sold it to Josias Du Pré Porcher in 1805. In 1914 the mansion was put on the market by the Estate of Frederick Cox’s grandson. The house and gardens, together with the surrounding parkland and an artificial lake created by damming a section of the RiverPinn, amounted to over 81 ha.
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This page is based on the article RAF Uxbridge published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
