aka a bit of local wandering on a December night to piece together some more local history …
A field. Redmires, Sheffield.
There once was an old racecourse here, covering around 100 acres, but it had fallen into disuse by the mid to late 1870’s. By the outbreak of WW1 over half of it appears to have been converted to fields with stone wall boundaries – it is within these fields that the potential sites for the landing ground for Redmires Airfield are located
Gustav Hamel, who flew the first ever airmail (between Hendon & Windsor Castle in September 1910) arrived at Redmires from Buxton in August 1912 and spent 3 days giving exhibition flights.
On Whit Tuesday 1914, Sheffield aviator Marcus Manton, then only 19 years old, gave flying demonstrations to some 8,000 spectators.
The use of Redmires airstrip as a military airfield was soon realised, and between March & October 1916, it was frequently used by ‘A’ Flight, No 33 Squadron, RFC, flying BE2c aircraft. No 33 Squadron had its headquarters at Gainsborough, and was established to defend the industrial areas of South Yorkshire and the north Midlands against enemy airship attack. Redmires was one of the Squadron’s night landing fields.
(*a bit odd as the airfield is the ‘wrong’ side of the City to the German threat, albeit some commentators reckon its height above sea level 275m/900ft offered an advantage)
It ceased to function as an airfield during the war.
