This ridge also overlooks the two other parts of Eastcotts – Harrowden to the north and Cotton End to the south. The name is taken from Short Brothers. The Admiralty established an airship works for the company in 1916. The company pulled out of airship work just three years later, but the name Shortstown stuck.
Transport
Road access to the village is provided by the A600 road.[3] The Stagecoach bus also runs frequent routes in the village, with Route 9 running to and from the town centre at frequent intervals.[4] Routes 9A and 9B also provide connections to Bedford as well as the nearby locations of Cotton End and Shefford, continuing on to Hitchin.
Village history
A map from 1915 of an area where Shortstown now stands.
Shortstown was built on Tinker's Hill, Harrowden. Before it was built, a windmill stood on the site from 13th to 16th century. From 17th to 18th century, the area was known as Windmill Hill.[6] Shortstown started with the establishment of the Airship Works in 1917 when housing for the workforce was built next to the airfield. In 1918 and 1927, sheds (later Grade II* listed buildings) were built for the R100 and R101 airships which then represented the latest passenger flight technology. The village was originally built by the Short Brothers for its workers,[7] but evolved into a settlement for people working at the RAF Cardington base.
Shortstown was only created from 1916 onwards. The land originally lay in the township of Eastcotts which was itself a part of the ancient parish of Cardington. Eastcotts became a separate civil parish in 1866.
A map from 1946 of an area where Shortstown now stands.
Early in 1916 the Admiralty was seeking a site for an airship works for Messrs. Short Brothers and after a two-month search the Naval Director of Air Services reported in March 1916 that a site had been selected at Cardington. It was picked as it was well served by roads and railways, was within easy reach of London by steam train and was a broad, flat valley running east–west without any obstructions. It was beyond the range of then known German bombers in Belgium, while "penetration by submarine landed agents was not considered likely due to the distance from the coast which it would be necessary to travel". There was also suitable surplus labour available in Bedford, and "the river affords a means of disposing of the effluent from sewage disposal works if such are established".
The whole site was bought by the Admiralty from the Whitbread Estate for £110,000 and in October 1916 Short Brothers made proposals for housing the employees required at the airship works. They estimated that for 1917 they would require 800 workers, 500 men and 300 women – of which 200 (mainly women) they hoped to obtain in Bedford. The rest would be housed in an entirely new "Garden City[9]" type settlement alongside the works.
The Building of Shortstown
By June 1919 the first phase of 151 houses had been built. This consisted of 12 six-roomed houses, 39 five-roomed houses, 64 four-roomed houses and 36 flats of three rooms each. The general layout and the design of the houses and airship works were by the architects Robert Burns Dick and James Cackett, of Cackett & Burns Dick of Newcastle upon Tyne. Work was carried out by them under the control of the Director of Works, Admiralty, and no local contractors were used.
Cardington airship sheds, former Short Brothers works housing R100 and R101airships. Shed no.1 (left) now holds the new aircraft Airlander 10. Shed no.2 (right) is used for creating films that require a large open-space area.
The houses in this initial development are in a simplified neo-Georgian style, mainly red brick with dark red tile roofs, and are more reminiscent of Hampstead Garden Suburb in London than the original Garden City at Letchworth. Although the road layout is fairly formal and most of the houses are terraced, regimentation is avoided by arranging groups of houses around curves in a butterfly pattern or by setting some houses back and some forward in a particular terrace.
Further houses were envisaged to the south and west, but in the event, these were not built until many years later and had little regard to the original style and layout. Similarly, the original plan made provision for shops, churches, a cinema and a hall in the centre, but all that was built was a social club.[10]
The Royal Airship Works
As a result of the building of Shortstown, the population of Eastcotts rose from 848 in 1911 to 2,065 by 1921.[11] However, in the meantime, Short Brothers, who were experiencing various difficulties, withdrew from airship manufacture and the Cardington Venture with effect from 1 April 1919 and moved to Rochester in Kent. The Cardington Works was, therefore, taken over directly by the government and renamed the Royal Airship Works,[12] but the associated settlement has retained its original name of Shortstown.
The Shorts Building before it was refurbished in 2011.
During the 1920s the giant airship R101 was built at Cardington, while its sister ship, the R100 was brought to Cardington in December 1929. The R101 set off for its maiden flight to India on the evening of 4 October 1930 but in the early hours of the next morning, it crashed into a hillside at Beauvais in France, killing all but six of its fifty-four crew and passengers.[13] The shock of this tragedy brought an abrupt end to this phase of British airship manufacture and the R100 was broken up.
Shorts Building
The shorts building was built in 1917. It has taken on many guises ranging from an Administration Block in the early airship days to Station HQ in WW2 and in more recent years as a training centre for the Civil Service. However, despite its many uses, it is still referred to today as The Shorts Building and now over 90 years later has been restored to its former glory as part of the new Bellway development.[14]
The building was refurbished in 2011 and a new site called New Cardington was also built. It is now used for 20 residential apartments and has a Public Common Hall, that shows a permanent display of 17 enhanced historic R101 photographs taken from The Airship Heritage Trust collection. There are also additional community rooms and Eastcotts Children's Centre is based here too.[14]
The Shorts Building fully refurbished.
RAF Cardington
The Royal Airship Works was put on a care and maintenance basis until 1938 when it was renamed the Balloon Development Establishment. However, the social club at Shortstown was still known as the Royal Airship Works and Shortstown Club in the 1980s.
In the meantime, in 1936, an RAF station had opened at Cardington, being particularly concerned with producing gas for barrage balloons and training barrage balloon crews as well as more general training of recruits and NCOs. Throughout the 1940s Cardington remained a busy RAF station and from 1953 it became the RAF's main recruitment centre.
The roads of the western half of the site are all named after Second World War bomber aircraft.
The back of the refurbished Shorts Building.
With the ending of National service and cuts in the armed forces the RAF's presence at Cardington began to dwindle and largely disappeared in the 1970s. As a result, the population of Eastcotts declined from 3,675 in 1951 to 1,710 in 1981.
Shortstown today
Since 2012 there has been significant housing development on land to the east of the A600, this part of the village is marketed as New Cardington and Eastcotts Green to appeal as more upmarket than Shortstown. Over half of homes on New Cardington development are for Housing Associations. Since New Cardington homes went on the market, house prices in old Shortstown have risen by more than 20%.[according to whom?] Also built new school and shops in the centre of shortstown Although Bellway homes marketed the development as New Cardington, in fact it remains an extension of Shortstown.
In May 2017, Shortstown had its Centenary, which took place in June, called Shortstown Fun Day. There was also a firework display that took place in September and a Centenary Reunion that took place in November.[15]
In April 2019 Shortstown became its own civil parish, having previously been part of the parish of Eastcotts.[16][17]
Education
The first school in Shortstown, built in 1957.
Despite houses having been built from 1917 onwards, Shortstown had no school until the mid-1950s. Some children from Shortstown seem to have attended that school as well as going to Cotton End School.[19]
Current Shortstown Primary School.
The first headmaster of this school was Mr Evans. A road in the village was supposedly named after him.[18]
A new school named Shortstown Primary School was built in New Cardington: starting construction in late 2012 and completed in September 2013. This school replaced the old, and now demolished school named Shortstown Lower School, where new houses now stand.[20]
The solid or underlying geology is a mudstone called Oxford Clay Formation. This was laid down between 154 and 164 million years ago in the warm, shallow seas of the Jurassic period.[22] The northern part of the area has a superficial geology consisting of river terrace deposits of sand, gravel, clay and silt. A similar mixture, called head, lies in the southern part of the community.[23] There is a woodland created by the Forest of Marston Vale called Shocott Spring, which is between Shortstown and Cotton End.[24]
Related Research Articles
R101 was one of a pair of British rigid airships completed in 1929 as part of the Imperial Airship Scheme, a British government programme to develop civil airships capable of service on long-distance routes within the British Empire. It was designed and built by an Air Ministry–appointed team and was effectively in competition with the government-funded but privately designed and built R100. When built, it was the world's largest flying craft at 731 ft (223 m) in length, and it was not surpassed by another hydrogen-filled rigid airship until the LZ 129 Hindenburg was launched seven years later.
The Borough of Bedford is a unitary authority area with borough status in the ceremonial county of Bedfordshire, England. Its council is based in Bedford, its namesake and principal settlement, which is the county town of Bedfordshire. The Bedford built-up-area is the 71st largest in the United Kingdom and comprises the boundaries of the pre-1974 Bedford Municipal Borough, the town of Kempston and the village of Biddenham, with the BUA surrounded by a rural area with many villages. 75% of the borough's population live in the Bedford Urban Area and the five large villages which surround it, which makes up slightly less than 6% of the total land area of the Borough.
Christopher Birdwood Thomson, 1st Baron Thomson, was a British Army officer who went on to serve as a Labour minister and peer. He served as Secretary of State for Air under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and between 1929 and 1930, when he was killed in the R101 disaster.
His Majesty's Airship R100 was a privately designed and built British rigid airship made as part of a two-ship competition to develop a commercial airship service for use on British Empire routes as part of the Imperial Airship Scheme. The other airship, the R101, was built by the British Air Ministry, but both airships were funded by the Government.
Cardington is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Bedford in Bedfordshire, England.
Eastcotts is an electoral ward within the Borough of Bedford, in the ceremonial county of Bedfordshire, England. It was formerly also a civil parish until its abolition on 1 April 2019, when Cotton End and Shortstown parishes were established.
Harrowden is a one-street hamlet in the civil parish of Shortstown, Bedfordshire, England.
The British Imperial Airship Scheme was a 1920s project to improve communication between Britain and the distant countries of the British Empire by establishing air routes using airships. The first phase was the construction of two large and technically advanced airships, the R100 and the R101; the R100 made a successful transatlantic crossing to Canada in 1930 in 78 hours. The scheme was terminated in 1931 following the crash in France of R101 in October 1930, while attempting its first flight to India.
The R.102 was a British airship planned in 1930 but never built. The development of R.102 resulted from the Imperial Airship Scheme, when it became apparent that the R100 and R101 airships then being built would not be capable of economic operation over the planned routes. After the crash of the R.101 in October 1930, the project was reevaluated and further airship development abandoned.
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Cardington Airfield, previously RAF Cardington, is a former Royal Air Force station in Bedfordshire, England, with a long and varied history, particularly in relation to airships and balloons.
Alfred John Sutton Pippard MBE FRS was a British civil engineer and academic. Pippard was the son of a carpenter and joiner and spent much of his early life helping his father on construction sites. Initially supposed to follow his father into the family business, Pippard instead decided to study for a bachelor's degree in civil engineering at the University of Bristol, supporting himself with an Exhibition award. Pippard worked for a Bristol based consulting engineer and for the Pontypridd and Rhondda Valley Joint Water Board in his early career. He also completed his master's degree during this period.
Cardington was a railway station on the Bedford to Hitchin Line which served the village of Cardington in Bedfordshire, England. Opened in 1857, it gave more than a century of service before closing in 1962.
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Lieutenant-Colonel Vincent Crane Richmond OBE FRAeS. (1893–1930) was an English engineer and airship designer. He served first with the Royal Naval Air Service then the Royal Air Force. He was notable as designer of the Royal Airship Works R101 airship in which he died on 5 October 1930 when it crashed over France on its maiden voyage.
Flight Lieutenant Herbert Carmichael "Bird" Irwin, AFC was an Irish aviator and Olympic athlete.
Major George Herbert "Lucky Breeze" Scott, CBE, AFC, was a British airship pilot and engineer. After serving in the Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Air Force during World War I, Scott went on to command the airship R34 on its return Atlantic crossing in 1919, which marked the first transatlantic flight by an airship and the first east–west transatlantic flight by an aircraft of any kind. Subsequently, he worked at the Royal Airship Works in connection with the Imperial Airship Scheme and took part in a second return Atlantic crossing, this time by the R100, in 1930. He was killed later in the year aboard the R100's near-sister, the R101, when it crashed in northern France during a flight to India.
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