RAF/USAF Upper Heyford, combined efforts 2010-2016 - Thread

RAF Upper Heyford was my huge derelict playground for much of my time on the exploring scene. Between 2010 and 2013 I must have visited it at least a dozen times with different people in conditions ranging from blazing summer sun to freezing snowy winter. Then news of it's imminent demolition surfaced in the summer of 2013 and I left it be, content with my many memories of the place, until I paid what was left one final farewell at the end of last year.

RAF Upper Heyford was one of the largest military bases in the UK with a combined area of roughly three square miles. It formed the blueprint for all major RAF bases built before the advent of WWII and was pretty much a self contained town in it's own right. The base was home to all the military stuff obviously but had purpose built service housing for the families of personnel stationed there, it had it's own shops, bank, clubs and pubs, laundry, schools, cinema, gym, bowling alley, hospital, everything that a town would need.

RAF Upper Heyford was used as a training facility after WWII until the 1950s. After the advent of the Cold War the first American personnel arrived and it was initially used as a station for USAF SAC Strategic Bombers and later a USAFE (US Air Force in Europe) base for tactical reconnaissance, fighter and fighter-bomber craft. To accomodate the US personnel stationed at the base areas were expanded and new facilities built, the 'streets' in the base between buildings were lined with fire hydrants, American-style street signs and other stuff. A baseball diamond was added on a field in the base and bleachers constructed to line it. The entire base became a tiny American town from the 1950s until the end of the Cold War.

At the end of the Cold War the USAF personnel departed and the base became redundant. In 1994 the communal areas of the base were all abandoned, save the service housing which is still lived in to this day by new residents. On the airfield side many of the hardened aircraft shelters were leased to private companies or used as storage. A car import company stores thousands of cars on the runways, there is a police training building on site and many many other things.

In addition to my many non-legal visits there were various things you could only see with permission/a key obtained from the heritage organisation which is based on site. The airfield side - still being active and with many many dangers - was one of those and the only way to see the wonderfully intact command bunkers, jet engine testing facility and the hardened shelters.

Enough time reading, now have some photos...

First visit, January 2010. Mainly externals as I took many better photos of the areas I explored at later visits. This was the school/police training academy built in the 1950s and the most heavily decayed and damaged portion of the site.

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First view of the famous 'sand room', the school sports hall which had been turned into an indoor beach volleyball court at some point in the base's history with the addition of tons and tons of sand.

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One of the barrack blocks, they contained dozens of murals painted in the 1980s by artists at the base.

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March 2010, the time I had my first ever encounter with police while exploring. It didn't help that there was a very much operational police station on the airfield side of the base...

The NCO (Non-Commissioned Officers) Club, which housed a casino, dance hall, bars, a club, and other stuff.

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In January 2011 I had the opportunity to go on a tour of the airfield side..

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In 2011 we were looking for something new to crack and the large hospital incinerator/boiler house we knew had never been done. This led to one of my most silly days exploring ever as the suicidal way into the incinerator building almost killed me and we then ended up in the badly flooded tunnel which at one point led into the hospital but had been bricked up. All I got from that encounter was seriously wet feet...

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After that we ventured back into the school complex and found the police training centre which had eluded me on previous visits.

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I then got my Canon 550D in the summer of 2011 and I immediately returned to my favourite playground.

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At some point the sand room had got hit savagely by taggers, 99% of the graffiti in the entire base was in this one building.

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Then in November 2011 I hit the jackpot. Thanks to my friend organising it I got to photograph a building that had never been done before, and as far as I'm aware was never done afterwards either. It is now one of the two new schools in the housing development.

This was the former Commissioned Officer's Club. It was very dark in here and most of the floor had been taken up because of catastrophic dry rot which made it interesting to shoot...

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We also got access to the cinema where I took some even worse photos in even worse light...

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The last major target was the hospital. It was the final building to be constructed on site only being opened in 1980. It wasn't solely for military use as it served Upper Heyford as well as the surrounding villages. When the base closed in 1994 the hospital also closed it's doors causing an uproar as it was a perfectly good hospital and an asset to the rural villages in north Oxfordshire. It spent more time derelict than it did in active service. After closure all the ground floor and basement windows were bricked up and the main entrance doors had a large iron gate installed behind them to stop entry. But where there's a will there's a way....

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My visits to the base stopped until December 2016 when, on a whim, I decided to go back. 99% of everything I had explored was gone - not including the active airfield side. All that was left was about half of the school site. It was incredibly sad but great to be able to say one last farewell to a place which I won't ever forget.

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Thanks for reading