Public art celebrates Bowerhill’s links with the RAF

A piece of public art commemorating Bowerhill’s links with the RAF has been unveiled on the road into the estate, Pathfinder Way. 

Bowerhill was the site of a major RAF Station, home to the No 12 School of Technical Training from 1940 to 1965, and thousands of forces personnel were trained there during that time. 

The art reflects the original metal gates to the RAF camp. Although, the actual RAF camp entrance was on Wellington Drive, this art is located at the modern-day entrance to the whole Bowerhill area. 

The art was part of the planning conditions for the Pathfinder Place housing development and a steering group worked with the developers, Taylor Wimpey, to come up with the concept. The group was made up of members of BRAG (Bowerhill Residents Action Group), Melksham Without Parish Council and RAF representatives, under the guidance of Wiltshire Council’s public art officer, who unveiled the artwork recently. 

They shortlisted and interviewed artists, and appointed Simon Ridley, a blacksmith artist from Devon, who took their ideas of depicting the RAF Technical Training School heritage of the area. 

There is another smaller piece of art located in the public open space on the Pathfinder Place development, which has a propeller in the design. The art insert was drawn by local community artist, Marilyn Trew, and explains the people behind the names of the roads in the new development.

RAF Melksham to Bowerhill –

A history of the RAF base from the RAF Melksham website: http://www.rafmelksham.info/ 

Visitors to Bowerhill on the outskirts of Melksham will sense echoes from the past reflected in road names like Hurricane, Lancaster, Wellington and Halifax, which conjure images of a time when gallant deeds were performed in the skies by brave young men.  

But this is not mere coincidence, because Bowerhill was the site of a major RAF Station which at its zenith accommodated over 10,000 personnel. The official title of the station was No.12 School of Technical Training and, although many local people remember seeing aircraft on display at the annual open days, it was never an operational flying base because it had no runway. The aircraft were used for training purposes for groundcrew and technicians and were transported to and from the base in dismantled form.  

RAF Melksham was better known as No 12 School of Technical Training from 1940 to 1965, but also housed No 10 School of Recruit Training and is not so well known as many of the other SoRTs but it averaged 100 a week of mainly National servicemen until its final intake arrived in June 1953 and passed out on the 17th August and the SoRT unit closed a week later. 

The station opened in July 1940, and the first unit to arrive were the School of Instrument Training from Cranwell. They were joined shortly afterwards by a branch of the RAF Armament School and by the end of 1940, the station was “passing-out” over 200 tradesmen each week. In 1942, the Armament School was moved away from Melksham and supplanted by the RAF Electrical School from Hereford, a move which was further enhanced by the arrival of another Electrical School from Henlow in 1944. Although other courses, covering engine trades, motor transport and basic training for both male and female recruits, were covered for shorter periods over the years, the two main trade schools, Instrument and Electrical, formed the main purpose of the station for the rest of its operational life until its eventual closure in 1965. 

After closure, the site was acquired by the old Bradford and Melksham Rural District Council. This included the married-quarters at Berryfields which were refurbished and let as local authority housing. Some of the larger permanent buildings on the western side were utilised by local businesses such as the Avon Rubber Company and the council began to develop the area around these into a trading estate. The old gymnasium was converted into the Christie Miller Sports Centre which was opened to the public in 1970. In 1970-71, development of the private housing estate began on the eastern side on land adjacent to the original officers’ quarters near the main gate entrance in Wellington Square. 

Today, Bowerhill is a thriving community containing over 1,500 houses together with a shop, a public house, primary school, plus a trading estate containing more than 100 companies large and small.