Old Sarum Airfield
Old Sarum Airfield is one of the oldest continuously licensed airfields in the United Kingdom and one of the most historically resonant aviation sites in the country. Located just north of Salisbury in Wiltshire, it sits at the edge of the Iron Age hillfort of Old Sarum, a place that has been occupied, fought over, and reimagined for thousands of years. Today the airfield functions as a thriving general aviation hub, home to light aircraft, gliders, microlights, and a flying school, making it a place where aviation enthusiasts can still watch the timeless pleasure of small planes banking over ancient chalk downland. Its combination of living aviation history and deep archaeological context makes it genuinely unlike any other airfield in Britain.
The airfield was established in 1917 during the First World War as one of the Royal Flying Corps' training stations, making it more than a century old. After the war it became associated with the Wiltshire School of Flying, and by the interwar years it had developed a modest civilian identity. During the Second World War it was again pressed into military service, and the landscape around it still carries subtle echoes of that period in the form of old perimeter tracks and earthworks. After 1945 it returned to civilian use and has remained in continuous operation ever since, a remarkable run that gives it a claim to being among the longest-lived licensed aerodromes in the country. The grass runways and unhurried atmosphere feel genuinely rooted in an earlier era of flight.
Physically the airfield is a classic grass aerodrome of the pre-war type: no concrete runways, no terminal buildings of any consequence, just wide open turf bounded by hedgerows and the chalk ridge beyond. The control tower is modest and unpretentious, the clubhouse warm and convivial, and on a clear morning the sound of piston engines warming up drifts across a landscape that has changed surprisingly little since those early RFC days. Swallows nest in the hangars in summer, and the smell of avgas mingles with cut grass in a way that feels quintessentially English. Visitors who come simply to watch from the perimeter fence will find it a deeply atmospheric experience, particularly on weekends when flying activity is at its peak.
The surrounding landscape is extraordinary by any measure. The vast hillfort of Old Sarum rises immediately to the north and east, its mighty Iron Age ramparts enclosing the ruins of a Norman castle and an early medieval cathedral, both managed by English Heritage and open to visitors. Stonehenge lies barely seven miles to the north across Salisbury Plain, and the city of Salisbury with its soaring cathedral spire is visible just two miles to the south. The Plain itself stretches westward in great sweeping folds of chalk grassland, one of the largest remaining areas of unimproved downland in northern Europe and a landscape of extraordinary ecological and historical richness. To be at this airfield is to be at the centre of one of the most densely layered historical landscapes in the British Isles.
For visitors the airfield is welcoming and accessible. The clubhouse is open to the public on most days, and the café provides a pleasant vantage point for watching aircraft come and go over the turf. Flying lessons and trial flights can be booked through the Wiltshire Aero Club, which has operated here for decades and maintains a friendly, inclusive culture. The airfield is best visited on weekends between spring and autumn when flying is most active and the weather on the chalk plateau is generally reliable. Access by car is straightforward via the A345 north of Salisbury, with parking available on site. There is no direct public transport to the airfield itself, though bus services run to nearby Old Sarum village and Salisbury is easily reached by train from London Waterloo.
One of the more quietly astonishing facts about Old Sarum Airfield is that it shares its ground with one of the most significant prehistoric and early medieval sites in Europe. The hillfort beneath and around which the airfield sits was continuously occupied from the Iron Age through to the medieval period, serving as a Roman town, a Saxon fortified settlement, and eventually a Norman stronghold complete with a cathedral that was later dismantled and rebuilt in the valley below as modern Salisbury Cathedral. The first bishop to use that new cathedral carried stone from the old one down the hill in a procession that took place in 1220. Standing on the airfield and watching a light aircraft rise into a blue Wiltshire sky, it is worth pausing to consider that this same piece of chalk has been a place of human activity, enterprise, and ambition for at least three thousand years.