Cardington, Bedfordshire
Cardington | |
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Bedfordshire and Luton | |
Ambulance | East of England |
UK Parliament | |
Cardington is a village and
Part of the ancient
Sites of interest
The Church of St Mary the Virgin has pieces dating from the 12th century, although the church itself was mostly rebuilt between 1898 and 1902. It is a Grade II listed building.[4]
Airships, barrage balloons and RAF Cardington
Cardington became one of the major British sites involved in the development of
The airships site was nationalised in April 1919, becoming known as the Royal Airship Works.
In preparation for the R101 project the No 1 shed was extended between October 1924 and March 1926; its roof was raised by 35 feet and its length increased to 812 feet. The No. 2 shed (Southern shed) was originally located at RNAS Pulham, Norfolk. It was dismantled there and re-erected at Cardington in 1928.
After the crash of the R101, in October 1930, all work stopped in Britain on airships. Cardington then became a storage station.
In 1936/1937 Cardington started building barrage balloons; and it became the No. 1 RAF Balloon Training Unit.
For both airships and barrage balloons, Cardington manufactured its own hydrogen, in the Gas Factory, using the steam reforming process. In 1948 the Gas Factory became 279 MU (Maintenance Unit), RAF Cardington; and then, in 1955, 217 MU. 217 MU, RAF Cardington, produced all the gases used by the Royal Air Force until its closure in April 2000; including gas cylinder filling and maintenance.
The two airship sheds ceased being part of the RAF Cardington site in the late 1940s and they were put to other uses. The fence was moved, so they were outside the main RAF Cardington site.
From 1970, No. 2 shed was used by the Fire Research Station for large-scale fire tests in sheltered conditions which could not be carried out at their site in Borehamwood, Herts. Such tests included work on sprinklers in high-rack storage, department stores and other locations, gas explosions (following the Ronan Point disaster of 1969), and reconstructions of notable fires including the Manchester Woolworth's fire of 1979. In 1972 the Fire Research Station was merged with the Building Research Station to form the Building Research Establishment (BRE) and in the 1980s onwards some of BRE's work in non-fire areas was done in the hangar until around 2001; this included multi-storey steel, concrete and wooden buildings which were constructed and then destructively tested within the huge space available. This shed was completely reclad for BRE in the 1990s by the Property Services Agency and its contractors and thus was looked after in comparison with the other shed.
The buildings tests were mentioned during the course of the BBC series The Conspiracy Files as evidence in the controversy surrounding the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 on 11 September 2001.[5]
A company called
Goodyear Blimps, 2011
In early 2011 two Goodyear Blimps (Spirit of Safety I and Spirit of Safety II) were refurbished in Shed 1, prior to their deployment on a European tour promoting road safety.
Sports
Cardington is the location of the two largest and most successful
Cardington Artificial Slalom Course is an artificial whitewater canoe slalom course located on the edge of Cardington next to Priory Country Park. The course was the first if its kind to be built in the UK, and hosts national canoe slalom competitions and cups. It is also used as a main training area for the Viking Kayak Club.
Notable people from Cardington
- George Gascoigne (1535–1577) – Elizabethan poet
- Samuel Whitbread (1720–1796) – brewer and MP for Bedford
- John Howard (1726–1790) – prison reformer and High Sheriff of Bedfordshire
References
- ^ "Civil Parish population 2011". Neighbourhood Statistics. Office for National Statistics. Archived from the original on 6 November 2016. Retrieved 6 November 2016.
- ^ "Eastcotts Parish Boundaries" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 September 2007.
- PMID 22091542.
- ^ Historic England. "PARISH CHURCH OF ST MARY THE VIRGIN (Grade II) (1114144)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 6 January 2017.
- ^ "BBC NEWS | Programmes | Conspiracy Files".
- ^ Little, Reg (11 October 2007). "Airship could serve Oxford-Cambridge". Oxford Times. Archived from the original on 7 October 2008. Retrieved 5 March 2008.
External links
- Cardington Timeline
- 2001 Census – Parish Profile for Cardington
- 134 (Bedford) Sqn – Air Training Corps (On former RAF Cardington Site)
- St. Mary the Virgin Church in the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland
- The Airship Heritage Trust – Cardington Sheds
- Many photos of Cardington Airship Hangars[permanent dead link]