Beaulieu Airfield History Project: Exploring & Documenting

I hope you enjoy my attempt to create a lasting resource about this historical place for other people to enjoy.

Thanks for visiting my personal blog about RAF Beaulieu. Hopefully you can follow the project as I document what I find with my son… plus now some friends who are also helping.

To give you some background, I’d always loved the RAF Beaulieu site. It’s a place my wife and I walk our dog, and also where we taught my son how to ride his bike.

But a chance conversation let to me exploring the history some more. I soon realised what a significant place this was, so decided to get out exploring more with my son and dog… but this time with a video camera.

son with GoPro camera — My son started to build his own interest in documenting New Forest wildlife and history.

How my RAF Beaulieu project started

I started off with one video showing me doing a walk around the RAF Beaulieu airfield perimeter Opens in a new tab. .

However, I soon realised that there was a huge amount at the RAF Beaulieu airfield site that I had not included in my first video.

I also started to see that in the post-war era particularly, aspects of RAF Beaulieu’s history didn’t appear to be documented online when I started researching my own questions.

I thought this would be a fun project for my son and I to do together…

We’d get more fresh air, we could learn about the New Forest and history, and other people would probably enjoy our fun too.

One of our favourite discoveries was the remains of the Defence Site accommodation on Stockley Inclosure.

Later I managed to get my hands on a map of the RAF Beaulieu WW2 airfield dated May 1945. There was a map of the airfield itself plus a second one showing all the dispersal sites and accommodation areas.

The aim of the project

I decided these two maps were going to be our starting point and reference to everything we were going to explore.

We set ourselves the aim of visiting every point of reference on there. That means walking to each building, structure, and location point listed on the map key, whilst also researching the history – there’s something like 300 points on the key.

taking photo at RAF Beaulieu — Once I started properly exploring the land in and around the airfield site, I could not believe what I was finding.

As well as creating video and photo documentaries of the locations, I will also be creating an online resource on this website with history I’ve uncovered.

It will include a memories section where people who grew up around the site or whose relatives did, can share stories.

Who am I?

I have no association to the Royal Air Force.

I am not a metal detectorist, and I don’t dig holes.

I am a local guy with a kid, a dog, and video camera trying to create a lasting resource for other people to enjoy for generations to come.

I just leave footprints.

I am sure I will get things wrong in my research.

But that’s where you can help.

If you would like to contribute and help out, please do contact me.

I encourage you to correct me where I’ve made errors, add to the project or pass down your memories.

You might also like to join the Facebook group where people interested in the location and history have daily conversations.

Thank you.