BUILDINGS once used as offices for Winkleigh Airfield could be converted into nine homes if planning consent is given.

The officers’ mess and associated rooms and offices at Bellinster Factory Estate, Berners Cross, have been rented for business purposes in recent times but empty for more than two years.

Planning documents to Torridge District Council said there has been no viable offers on the site known as The Depot” despite a two year marketing programme and so conversion into eight three-bed units and one two-bed unit, all single storey, was being proposed.

Winkleigh Airfield was used in World War II, being just five minutes flying time to the North Atlantic coastline of Britain and less than an hour from the battlefronts of France.

Known as RAF Winkleigh, it played an important and strategic role in the war in Europe.

In 1940 it was deemed by the Air Ministry that the area needed a fighter airfield.

Work commenced in 1940 on building the airfield, which was to be used as a satellite for RAF Chivenor, Coastal Command.

RAF Winkleigh opened around 1943 under 10Grp Fighter Command.

Designed in the Crossbow style, there were two concrete and tarmac runways.

Types of aircraft flown from there included Spitfires, Hurricanes, Mosquito's and even 161 Squadron flying Westland Lysanders (September 1943 - September 1944).

This was a "Black" squadron, flying dangerous secret sorties delivering and collecting spies from occupied Europe.

Other units resident there:

• Detachment No. 286 Squadron RAF (1942-) with the Hawker Hurricane IIC

• No. 406 Squadron RCAF (April - September 1944) with Bristol Beaufighter and de Havilland Mosquito XII and XXX

• No. 415 Squadron RCAF (1943-44) with the Fairey Albacore

• Norwegian Training Base between December 1944 and November 1945 with North American Harvards, Airspeed Oxfords and Fairchild PT-19 Cornells.

RAF Winkleigh officially closed in 1958.

The buildings proposed for development, which are not listed, are in Class E use which covers commercial and business use and comprise of office, kitchen and storage space with a gross internal area of 1482m2.

They were most recently used by a research institute, Elemental Digest, from 2018 and 2023, prior to the company’s liquidation. Before that a firm making pet food and a company making fish bait occupied the site. A parking court has space for 20 vehicles.

Torridge District Council will make a decision on the plans in the near future.

Alison Stephenson

LDRS

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