Handley Page Field
HANDLEY PAGE FIELD: Civil aerodrome/airfield
Operated by: Clayton & Shuttleworth
Location: N of the B1190 and River Witham, roughly 1.25nm ESE of Lincoln city centre
Period of operation: 1918 certainly - other reports indicate from 1916 up to 1920
NOTES: It appears that Handley Page 0/400s and Vickers Vimys were flown out from this small airfield, at minimum load, to land at the nearby WEST COMMON No.4 Aircraft Acceptance Park.
A MICHAEL T HOLDER GALLERY
In March 2026 Mike Holder, a great long-term friend of this 'Guide', discovered that Messrs Summerfield and Hunt had used this airfield from 30th September to the 14th October 1920. He has kindly provided the following items to illustrate the location.
It appears that the aircraft were produced in WW1 at the Clayton and Shuttleworth Abbey Works, and the 1930 map shows that the beginning of the Tower Works was already well underway. So, it seems reasonable to suppose that in and just after WW1, the airfield was actually much larger and extending east from the Abbey Works. Advice on this being the case will be most welcome.
This Article One was published in the Lincolnshire Observer on the 1st October 1920.
A NOT UNCOMMON PROBLEM
In spending countless hours searching the newspaper archives for articles and adverts etc to illustrate so many of the listings in this 'Guide', Mike often finds that the modern digital scans are of very poor quality. So, please accept our apologies for these two articles from the Lincolnshire Observer and Lincolnshire Chronicle, especially the latter shown below. My picture editing programme is fairly basic but at least the results are now just about legible - you should see the originals! Some were so dark I struggled to barely read much of the contents.
The Article Two was published in the Lincolnshire Chronicle on the 2nd October 1920.
The local area view is from my Google Earth© derived database.
NOTES: Samuel Summerfield established S Summerfield & Co in early 1920 and were based in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. Operating just one Avro 504K at a time, (three in all it seems), they confined their operations mostly to the East Coast and Yorkshire. A bit of a delve reveals which of the three Avro 504Ks they were operating here.
The first Avro 504K, G-EADR (ex D6245) was registered from 02.03.20 until 08.08.20, but had crashed at Werrington, Northants on the 24th June 1920. It took some time for the paperwork to catch up in those days and might also explain why Summerfield had told Captain Hunt to avoid any 'stunting'.
The second Avro 504K, G-EAEB (ex D8774), was registered from 26.07.20 until 03.10.21, so this was the one operated here. That later crashed at Norwich on the 25th September 1921.
The third Avro 504K was G-EASA (ex F9809), registered from 14.11.21 until 08.05.22, and that crashed at Doncaster on the 28th April 1922. From then on the story of the company appears to stop. Even so, for those days, managing to stay in business for three years when operating just one aircraft was quite an achievement in itself.
john walls
This comment was written on: 2026-04-24 00:25:12The Handley Pages were built in Abbey Works. The c1950 aerial view shows a sawtooth roofed building which was the erecting shop for the HPs. facing the river. The later Tower Works grew in the latter days of C&S for railway work, the 2 large black sheds in the 50s image south end of Tower Works are post ww1
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