The Origins of Banshee
This is the first in a series of blogs exploring where my ideas for Banshee came from – here, it’s Location, Location, Location.
Much of Banshee is set at the fictional RAF Martinford, which in the 1960s housed Vulcans and in 2022 is an automotive development centre.
RAF Martinford was inspired by RAF Gaydon*, but there is a significant difference: to my knowledge, there isn’t a bunker on the Gaydon site, be it on the Aston Martin site, the Jaguar Land Rover site, or the British Motor Museum.
When I walked through the gates of Land Rover’s Gaydon site in the early 2000s, I didn’t imagine my surroundings would plant one of the seeds that grew into this story.
In particular, rumours of what lay under the site stuck in my mind.
One was that one of the workshops, a repurposed hangar, had tunnels and bomb storage underneath; another claimed there were tunnels linking Gaydon to the nearby MOD depot at Kineton. As far as I’m aware, none of these are true. In fact, Cold War RAF Gaydon’s bomb store is out by the Fosse Way, at the edge of the former airfield boundary, and I believe it currently houses the British Film Institute’s archive.
While Gaydon may not have had a 1940s-era bunker, however, its wartime satellite airfield just down the road, RAF Wellesbourne Mountford, did.
These days, RAF Wellesbourne Mountford is now Wellesbourne Airfield**, but it also houses a small museum which opened on Sundays. On that museum site – or rather, under it – is the wartime emergency command bunker. This is the type of bunker I put under Martinford. Helpfully, many second world war airfields were built to standard layouts and designs, which means it was fairly simple for me to obtain an actual bunker plan (see my scale drawing below).
My hand-drawn floorpan of the type of bunker found in the opening chapter of Banshee.
Between Covid and not living locally any more, it’s been a while since I’ve been able to go to Wellesbourne. Some years ago, access to the bunker was restricted as it was flooded, and I don’t know what the current status is. I remember it as a nice little museum to visit, though, if you’re in the area.
Why did Wellesbourne have a bunker, but it seems Gaydon didn’t? There’s a question. As far as I can determine, not every wartime airfield was built with one, and the reasons one way or the other aren’t recorded. It’s also possible Gaydon did have one, but it sits under land which is now part of the British Motor Museum, or under the new housing estates across the B4100. Or it could have been swallowed up when the site was redeveloped for the V-force. If anyone has researched this in more detail, I’d love to hear what you’ve found.
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*Vulcans were never permanently at Gaydon: I wrote this blog post about the history of RAF Gaydon some years ago for TwitterVForce.
**Wellesbourne also houses Vulcan XM655, which features in another post, and the famous airfield Touchdown Café; both of these are worth a visit as well.