Saturday 14 July 2012

RAF Hooton Park


RAF Hooton Park, on the Wirral Peninsula, Cheshire, was a Royal Air Force station originally built for the Royal Flying Corps in 1917 as a training aerodrome for pilots in World War I. During the early/mid 1930s, it was one of the two airfields (with Liverpool Speke) handling scheduled services for the Merseyside region. Hooton Park was home to No. 610 (County of Chester) Squadron and, post World War II, to No. 611 (West Lancashire) and No. 663 (AOP) Squadron.

On 28th September 1933, Lowry and Jan Gabrial landed at the aerodrome with Tom Forman, a friend of Lowry's from Cambridge, who had hired a plane to fly from Heston Aerodrome via Castle Bromwich Aerodrome en route to North Wales. (Jan Gabrial Inside The Volcano Pg. 26).

Lowry refers to Air Force Officers at Woodside Ferry in his short story 'Goya The Obscure' who could have been on their way to RAF Hooton Park. 


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