If you have ever driven around the Solway coast you can’t help but notice the 100 feet masts that light up the sky at night. Of course these huge structures aren’t merely decorative. These masts serve a very important purpose. The masts broadcast a time signal, generated by the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, Middlesex, which boasts an accuracy of one second in 15 million years. Listeners to BBC Radio 1 will no doubt have heard this signal, manifesting itself as the “pips” which count down the hour. The signal is widely used in the transport and financial sectors as well.
All this got me thinking about the history of the site. There are a number of rather strange buildings littered around the perimeter of the masts, which I decided to research further. After asking the inhabitants of the nearby village of Anthorn and looking on the internet, I discovered that the site of the masts used to be an old military air base.
The site was originally used as a World War One landing strip before being reinstated by the RAF at the start of the Second World War as an emergency landing ground for RAF Silloth. The Royal Navy took over the site in December of 1942, building RNAS Anthorn, eventually being commissioned in September 1944, and given the title ‘HMS Nuthatch’. The base eventually closed down in March of 1958.
My vision for this project was to capture the essence of the area at the time, to show a trace of a once bustling air base during and after the Second World War. I wanted the pictures to look grubby, to look derelict, but at the same time wanted a hint of the area circa 1950 – to show that even though it’s gone, it has not been forgotten.
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