Roses still flower at Middleton St George 75 years after they were planted for the Second World War airmen who never came home

“I worked at Teesside Airport in the early 2000s and was given a tour of the perimeter by the then safety officer Peter Foster, who had been there since the RAF days in the 60s,” says Dave Middlemas.

"I recall seeing depressions where crashes, sometimes fatal, had occurred in post war years as pilots trained on the new jet aircraft - mostly Gloster Meteors.”

Dave recalls seeing the crumbling remains of the airfield’s 43 “dispersal pads”.

RAF Middleton St George from the air, showing the dispersal pads, which are the strange circular shapes around the edge of the airfield. Picture courtesy of Geoff Hill

From the air, the dispersal pads look like the splayed fingers of a hand. Each aircraft sat on its own dispersal pad on a fingertip. When it was time for take-off, it travelled down the finger into the circular palm and from there it went down the arm, which was known as a funnel runway which fed onto the main runway.

The dispersal pads were usually arranged around the perimeter of an airfield, ensuring that the planes were dispersed from the central hangars. This meant that an enemy attack couldn’t wipe out every machine with a single bomb; it also meant that if a friendly bomb went off when it was being loaded onto a plane, it would only cause localised damage and not threaten either the control tower or the living quarters.

Lancaster bomber takes off from Middleton St George Airport - now Durham Tees Valley Airport..

“Of particular note near the dispersal pads were quite a few overgrown metal lattice frames which were apparently Lancaster bomb racks that had been removed and dumped from the Canadian bombers as they finally departed for home in June 1945. The long flight back to Nova Scotia via the Azores necessitated the jettisoning of all non-essential weight. These had just laid there where they had been dumped 60 years earlier, although I think they have since removed.”

This brings us to the most frequently asked questions about RAF Middleton St George: are there really rose bushes that were once tended by airmen, and does a unique assemblage of alpine plants really grow there?

Airfield historian Geoff Hill confirms that both answers are yes.

Royal Canadian Air Force Lancaster bombers at Raf Middleton St George towards the end of the Second World War.

Members of the groundcrew would have planes out on the dispersal pads to look after. As the pads were so far away from shelter, many of the groundcrew would camp out in makeshift tents which were often given ironically glamorous names, like Gladys’ Hotel.

“I’ve spoken to hundreds of groundcrew over the years and they’ve said the same thing, including Bill Steel, a Canadian, who about 20 years ago I took round on his first visit back in 50 years,” says Geoff.

“Bill lost four or five aircrew in his time, and he found the wild dogrose bushes that he had planted near the dispersal pads in memory of the men who hadn’t come back.”

A wild dog rose

The pale pink wild roses grew naturally in the churchyard of St George’s, a medieval church that once looked after the people of the lost village of Low Middleton. The church now stands all alone just outside the airfield perimeter fence – but close enough for the groundcrew to bring in the roses and plant them around the dispersal pads on the south side of the airfield.

“Bill planted them, tended them and when he came back, he saluted them,” says Geoff. “He was very emotional, and I must admit, so was I.”

The second question concerns the alpine plants. “Everybody was curious to know why the airfield has what is said to be a unique collection in the UK, so in the early 2000s, Peter Foster and I got David Bellamy in. He was very interested, and he found about 10 varieties of alpine plants that really shouldn’t be growing wild in this country.”

The famous environmentalist’s theory was that as the Lancaster bombers flew over the Alps, they unknowingly collected seeds in the flaps and crevice of their fuselages. Another theory is that when they dropped their bombs, they caused an explosion of dust – including seeds – which rose and enveloped the plane.

Either way, the seeds were brought back to Middleton St George, where it inevitably rained on the planes as they were parked on their dispersal pads. The rain washed the seeds out, and they began to grow…

“I remember we found an old aircraft canopy out there inside which was a huge caterpillar the size of my finger – I’ve never seen one as big in this country,” says Geoff. “David said it was a hawk moth caterpillar from the Alps – if it’s good enough for him, it is certainly good enough for me.”