Paxton Park Public School
Notes: The school, later a hospital, was demolished in 1959. Therefore this map only gives a rough position within the UK.
PAXTON PARK: Temporary landing site
Location: Paxton Park Public School, near St. Neots
NOTES: In his most excellent and beautifully written autobiography, A Willingness To Die, the ‘Battle of Britain’ Spitfire ‘Ace’ Brian Kingcome, (who if still alive would, without much doubt, kick me up the backside for describing him this way), gives a wonderful description of how his ‘street cred’ rose enormously after his elder sisters boyfriend dropped in to visit. I’ll quote:
“One sunny afternoon early in my first term……there came the drone of an aero engine overhead – not a common sound in the mid-1930s – and a small aircraft circled the school a couple of times at roof-top height. The whole school rushed out to watch spellbound as the tiny machine throttled back and, in that lovely burbling, swooshing silence that follows the throttling back of an old-fashioned aero engine, glided in to land in the park in the front of the house. Out of the aircraft stepped Philip Gordon-Marshall, nonchalant in flying helmet and silk scarf, cutting every bit as romantic a figure as Errol Flynn in Dawn Patrol. ‘Is there a Brian Kingcome here?’ he asked, ‘Have I come to the right place?’
Asking permission to take Brian ‘Up for a spin’ which was granted, “Basking in the gaze of many envious eyes,” he then describes, “I climbed aboard and a moment later found myself for the first time in a world I had never dreamed could exist – a world free from the drag of earth’s umbilical cord, free to climb, swoop and dive, free of boundaries, free of gravity, free of ties, free to do anything except stand still.”
For the purposes of this Guide this describes perfectly how, and even today, it is often possible to land on any suitable area. The huge difference today being, in most if not all cases, prior permission is required and it isn't always granted. Back in those days it was common practise to just ‘drop in’ and almost nobody seemed to take any exception to this. See WITNEY in OXFORDSHIRE for his accounts of flying around on pub crawls by air in WW2!
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