Lucas Aerospace, Honiley - April 2015

[mookster]

I have known about this place for ages but a) forgot about it until just before I left for the USA last month and

B) never realised it was fairly nearby...Lucas Aerospace operated out of the former RAF Honiley site after the airfield was decommissioned in 1957. They departed some time around 1990 and now the airfield is owned by Prodrive who do all sorts of driving/racing/testing stuff on the airfield itself, with these former test cells hidden away in the undergrowth at one end of the site.

Looking at the aerial view and walking down the quiet roads towards the general location of the site I was thinking to myself 'this will be a breeze' as it looked fairly straightforward access-wise. However, the gods conspired against me and OverArch as we found ourselves, unknown to us at the time, going catastrophically off course and ending up within metres of the very live Prodrive buildings. I think alarm bells should have started ringing in my head when we had to cross over one of the bits of banked racetrack but hey ho, luckily we realised our 'error of navigation' before anything bad happened, and after a short tactical retreat/run away we found ourselves back on course and in where we needed to be.

It's taken a bit of a battering since I last saw photos from it a while ago but it was a nice peaceful wander with only the sounds of noisy birds for company.

Thanks for looking more here https://www.flickr.com/photos/mookie427/sets/72157649450890053/

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[Lara]

That looks a cracking wander, nice one Mooks

 

[Matt Inked]

Sweet!

Looks like a decent place to explore.

 

[Lenston]

Looks a good spot this mate

 

[jones-y-gog]

Am liking this one!

 

[skeleton key]

Defo some interesting bits there Mooks and have done well there mate

 

[The_Raw]

Some nice bits and bobs left in there

 

[hamtagger]

Liking those old green signs, can beat an old RAF base, nice one Mooks

 

[OverArch]

I blame the patchy data reception around there.. and the long walk down the road after the car turned its nose up at the off-road surface!

 

[sj9966]

Good stuff mate, I see the clock in the control room has been nicked! The Prodrive site is owned by Jaguar-Landrover now. Prodrive moved out around 2010 but kept security there until JLR moved in. JLR use the airfield for customer road testing of heritage vehicles.

http://www.jaguar.co.uk/about-jaguar/jaguar-heritage/heritage-driving.html

 

[shaddam]

cool stuff mooks !