Site Today
The airfield site today has become a housing estate called Riverview Park; little can be identified of the original use. Leander Drive & Vigilant Way were built quite a distance in-field from the former perimeter track, which ran eat-west, almost where Astra Drive now runs to the southern edge of Riverview Park. To the west and north it followed a line almost where the existing boundary of Riverview Park Estate now stands and to the east, it ran almost adjacent to Thong Lane. The main entrance to the airport, leading to the control tower & hangars was roughly where the existing mini-roundabout in Thong Lane now is.
On the eastern side of Thong Lane, where the leisure centre & golf club now occupy the site was the eastern wartime extension to the airfield. The peri track ran east from Thong Lane from a point roughly opposite Vigilant Way to the south, extended towards Shorne for about half a mile, before looping northwards and then north-east towards what is now the Leisure Centre, before finally crossing Thong Lane to link up with the peri track on the west of Thong Lane roughly where Leander Drive now is situated.
The current approach road to the leisure centre does follow the line of the peri track.
"Cascades" Leisure Centre in Thong Lane has a plaque dedicated to the airmen of World War II who served at Gravesend Airport. The Control Tower from the Airport was located across the road from the grounds. The Stand By Set House (Emergency Generator Building) stands in the field immediately to the north of Cascades surrounded by two modern day barns whilst there is a small piece of the tarmac outer perimeter-track left in the fields behind Astra Drive. But this has fallen into disrepair. These are all that remain of the entire airfield. In addition, two buildings in Stacey Close off Valley Drive (The Stork at Rest Pub and the building opposite) housed the airfield's sick quarters.
Read more about this topic: RAF Gravesend
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“I am not aware that any man has ever built on the spot which I occupy. Deliver me from a city built on the site of a more ancient city, whose materials are ruins, whose gardens cemeteries. The soil is blanched and accursed there, and before that becomes necessary the earth itself will be destroyed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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