North Luffenham, England
When I was 8 years old my family moved to RAF North Luffenham and was one of ten American families on the base. We lived here for two years. Since we are visiting England we thought it would be nice to visit and I could show Mary Kay where I lived.
The station was built as a training airfield, opening in 1940. It was later taken over by 5 Group of RAF Bomber Command as a heavy bomber base, and was expanded by the building of concrete runways later in the war. The station was taken over by the British Army and renamed St George's Barracks in 1998. The Base is currently involved in the process of master planning for 3,000 homes. So our timing is good because it is still St. Georges Barracks with the infrastructure of the RAF base still intact, which assisted us in finding my old neighborhood.
We caught the R5 bus to go to North Luffenham from Stamford. We went through beautiful open countryside for 20 minutes to arrive at North Luffenham. The Village is still very small and has a population of 649 residents. Needless to say there was not much to the village and probably it was the same as when we lived in the area. The RAF Base is a mile outside of the Village.
SInce there was little to do or see in North Luffenham we asked the bus driver when the next bus would be coming to take us back to Stamford. He told us a little over an hour and that bus would be this one. There was no formal bus stop so he would look for us on the road upon his return. We told him that we were actually interested in the old RAF Base where I lived as a child and I was trying to locate my old home, so we decided to stay on the bus for the entire route to Uppingham and back to Stamford.
We were the only riders on the bus and we got to know the driver Dean who was familiar with RAF North Luffenham, so his route back took us along one of the streets that bordered the Officers Housing. Stopped so we could take a look to see if it was familiar. It was very similar to my memories. The house we lived in was similar to the one pictured.
The driver couldn't go into the neighborhood for us to driver the streets for our actual house. The second photo shows the open common area behind the houses that surrounded the open area. So this was similar to our neighborhood. Across the road from the housing was the base.
As we traveled down the road we were able to see the non officers housing units which also looked familiar.
The final confirmation that we were near our house was the estate house on the corner before entering the road to base housing. I remember it being called Colonel Steiner's house as a kid.
While we didn't find our exact house, I feel certain that we were in my neighborhood and I was able to revisit part of my childhood in England.