Forest Flying Exhibition – East Boldre
As part of Festival of Archaeology 2019 East Boldre Village Hall will be hosting a WWI Airfield Exhibition from Friday 26th – Sunday 28th July 2019 thanks to funding from the Our Past, Our Future a National Lottery Heritage Funded Landscape Partnership Scheme.
This free event will include:
Airfield tours, presentations, sales & information stands & more. It will include hundreds of restored photographs, including many new ones, featuring the Tucker Diaries recently added to the collection.
At
East Boldre Village Hall
On
26 – 28 July
Friday, 26th 1 – 5 pm
Sat/Sun 27/28th 10am – 4pm
East Boldre, Beaulieu Aviation Training Station
Hard to believe the tiny village of East Boldre was once home to a fleet of flying machines, one of the first flying schools in the country, massive aircraft hangars among nearly 150 WW1 buildings and about 2000 personnel scurrying among the heather and gorse at the No. 29 Training Depot Station of the Royal Flying Corps. All that remains is the East Boldre Village Hall, once the Officers’ Mess, with less obvious echo’s of airfields past still to be found across the heath.
You can find out more about the WWI Airfield and Flying School here: East Boldre Airfield – the original RAF Beaulieu
Corporal Gordon Tucker
Born 1897, Corporal Gordon Tucker was still in his teens when he was an air mechanic at the East Boldre, Beaulieu Airfield for a year during WW1. Between his days and nights repairing planes, he kept a record of the goings on. His letters and diaries are the most extensive records found to date of the day-to-day life of the airfield during WW1. You can find out more about Gordon Tucker and his diaries here: Corporal Gordon Tucker – A mechanic at Beaulieu, Hounslow and Wye Aerodromes between 1916 and 1919.