Today
Because of the importance of this aerodrome, Bomber Command Heritage have chosen the site as the best canvas for it's vision of an Education Centre/Museum dedicated to telling the story of RAF Bomber Command of the WWII period. Now that MoD are selling the site, Cherwell District Council have formed a parnership with Bomber Command Heritage to make this project happen. There is risk that the site may be split, thus losing a highly important site of Architectural military history in the process.
The Ministry of Defence still owns part of the site, that is used for British Army training, but has now been placed on the market for sale. In June 2004, the RAF Gliding and Soaring Association moved to RAF Halton. The main use of the site is now civilian gliding, being home to both a newly-reformed (July 2004) Windrushers Gliding Club, who lease the site, and also the Oxford University Gliding Club and Cranfield University Gliding Club, as sub-sections within the Windrushers club.
The airfield is one of the finest examples of an unmodified pre-war RAF station still almost completely in existence, with many listed buildings. The brick-built 1934 "Fort" type 1959/34 control tower survives, as do the two C-type and two A-type aircraft hangars.
In the late 1990s, plans were proposed to develop the airfield for housing and industry, but they were abandoned due to strong local opposition and the historic nature of the site. In 2002, Cherwell District Council listed the area as a Conservation area.
Read more about this topic: Bicester Airfield
Famous quotes containing the word today:
“Not too many years ago, a child’s experience was limited by how far he or she could ride a bicycle or by the physical boundaries that parents set. Today ... the real boundaries of a child’s life are set more by the number of available cable channels and videotapes, by the simulated reality of videogames, by the number of megabytes of memory in the home computer. Now kids can go anywhere, as long as they stay inside the electronic bubble.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)
“My advice to people today is as follows: If you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out.”
—Timothy Leary (b. 1920)
“Most personal correspondence of today consists of letters the first half of which are given over to an indexed statement of why the writer hasn’t written before, followed by one paragraph of small talk, with the remainder devoted to reasons why it is imperative that the letter be brought to a close.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)