Place Name
Military heritage. A former military airfield used as a Royal Navy Air Station during World War One and reactivated during World War Two as an RAF station, after a spell of being used to test non-military aircraft, and for use as civilian gliding base. In 1938 it was taken over by the RAF’s Coastal Command, for patrols protecting coastal shipping. During the Battle of Britain, the base was subject to several raids by enemy aircraft, including on August 13, 1940, when the Luftwaffe sent at least 50 bombers to attack Detling and RAF Rochford in an operation codenamed Adlertag (Eagle Day). Twenty-two aircraft were destroyed on the ground, the hangars were set alight with 67 service and civilian personnel – including the commanding officer – killed in the raid. By December 1944, the airfield was surplus to requirements for flying and instead it became a disarmament school, training RAF personnel how to deal with Nazi fanatics not abiding by a surrender and teaching students about booby-trapped buildings and dealing with German prisoners. After the war it was used as a glider training base for the RAF and civilian use but closed in the 1950s and is today used as the show ground for the annual Kent County Show. This is one of a cluster of roads laid out and named after RAF connections in reference to Hornchurch Airfield which was very close by. The airfield was originally known as Sutton’s Farm during the First World War, when it occupied 90 acres and used for the protection of London. It was closed temporarily a few years after the war in 1923 but reopened when the RAF expanded five years later. It closed permanently in 1962. It was from here that the first ever recorded interception of an enemy aircraft over Britain was made by Lieutenant John Slessor on the day he arrived at Sutton’s Farm, October 13, 1915. The attack had to be aborted however, when the airship disappeared into cloud. During the Second World War the station was a Sector Airfield of RAF Fighter Command’s 11 Group, covering London and the south east of England during the Battle of Britain in 1940.
