Prees Heath Airfield - Butterfly Conservation

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In 1942 a bomber training airfield was constructed by Alfred
McAlpine on the common and surrounding farmland, with all the
land being flattened and drains installed. It was initially known as
RAF Whitchurch Heath, but its name was changed to RAF Tilstock
to avoid confusion with an RAF Whitchurch in southern England
after a number of planes had been flown to that airfield in error.
There were a number of accidents both on the airfield and elsewhere
on training flights. On one occasion a Stirling ran into problems
when the very strong wind suddenly dropped during landing, and
by good fortune the pilot was able to swing the plane round and
go through the perimeter fence and onto the A49 Shrewsbury Whitchurch road.
35 airmen were killed as a result of flying accidents, some of which
may have been connected to the fact that many of the airplanes
were quite old, having been retired from operational duties as
being ‘war-weary’. Many of the accidents occurred in night-time
flying exercises. This included Pilot Officer D.P.R. Wild, who was
flying a Whitley when a con-rod in the starboard engine seized.
He instructed other crew members to bail out, and left his position
to move to the escape hatch himself, but in doing so his parachute
opened, which prevented him from jumping safely. Untangling
himself he returned to the cockpit hoping to control the Whitley
enough to crash land. Although he reached the airfield, he lost
control at the last moment, the plane crashed alongside the
runway and he was killed in the ensuing fire.
WAAF Drivers and Others
Stirling Bomber on the A49
There were three runways, and the main runway was over one mile
long and fifty yards wide and crossed the A41, which was closed
for the duration of the war. The chief bomber airplane used in the
training of the pilots and aircrew was the Whitley, known as the
‘Flying Coffin’ on account of its shape, powered by two Rolls-Royce
Merlin X engines. Stirlings, Wellingtons, Ansons, Oxfords and Halifaxes
were also based here, as well as Hurricanes and a Spitfire for fighter
affiliation duties. In April 1945 it was recorded that 187 officers and
1,695 other ranks had been based at the airfield.
As it was a training airfield, no bombing raids over Germany took
place from here. However flights were carried out over France to
drop hundreds of thousands of propaganda leaflets, termed Nickel
raids. Stirlings were also used to tow Horsa gliders which featured
in transporting troops in the Arnhem operation and the D-Day
landings.
Replica of a Horsa Glider under construction at RAF Shawbury
The Witley Bomber
A number of personnel from the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force were
based at the airfield, some of whom had driving duties such as
leading visiting aircraft to dispersal points with ‘Stop - Follow Me’
displayed on their vans, or driving ambulances. One of them,
Peggy Drummond-Hay, wrote a book about her experiences called
‘The Driving Force’. In it she recalls a white bull terrier called Sinbad
belonging to an officer who was killed - he used to be seen queuing
for and then getting on the bus back to the airfield from Whitchurch
in the evenings, always occupying a seat and refusing to be
moved.
For more information on the Partnership
or to find out how to get involved
call us on 01743 284274
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An In te r nme n t C a
At the outbreak of World War Two in 1939 the British
government conducted an immediate review of all Austrians
and Germans living in Britain, many of whom had come to
this country to escape persecution by the Nazi regime. It
was feared that some of these people could in fact be Nazi
sympathisers and therefore pose a threat to Britain as ‘Fifth
Columnists’. Three categories were created for these socalled enemy aliens: A - High security risk, to be interned
immediately, B - doubtful cases, subject to restrictions and
C - non-security risks.
One of the detainees was Wilhelm Jondorf, a greetings card
A number of internees on the
artist who had fled Germany in November 1938.
common became famous later in
By January 1940 just 528 Category A enemy aliens had
been interned in camps. However, with the progress of the
war going badly with the fall of Norway, Denmark, Holland
and Belgium, and an increased fear of imminent invasion
of this country by Germany, in May of 1940 it was decided
to intern all Category B individuals. In the following month,
with the fall of France, with Italy joining the war on the
German side and a mounting sense of panic, all category
C individuals were interned as well. Several thousand people
were interned, across the country in makeshift camps,
including one here on the common.
life. The economist EF Schumacher,
The camp consisted of a series of canvas tents
who went on to write the hugely
accommodating around 1,200 men, surrounded by a high
influential book ‘Small is Beautiful’,
barbed wire fence. Different categories of internees were
subtitled A Study of Economics as
segregated by internal fencing. Wilhelm was able to paint
if People Mattered, was interned
in watercolours aspects of life in the camp, and his paintings
here. Two members of the Amadeus
are reproduced here. The paintings were donated quite
String Quartet, Norbert Brainin and
recently to the Yad Vashem Art Museum in Jerusalem, which
Hans Schidlof, met at the camp for
retains their copyright. They have a humorous tone despite
the first time. Brainin had managed to take his violin into the
the fact that conditions for the internees in the camp were
camp, and soon one was obtained for Schidlof, and they
far from ideal. Sanitation was basic, the summer of 1940
and other musicians provided entertainment for the internees
was initially very wet, causing the tents to be surrounded by
- one of the Wilhelm Jondorf paintings shows a gala concert
mud as there were no duckboards, and subsequently very
taking place. The Amadeus Quartet went on to become
hot. Internees slept on groundsheets and straw-filled
one of the leading string quartets on the international stage
mattresses. The daily diet was salted herrings.
in the postwar years.
By the autumn of 1940 the camp had been closed down,
and those internees who had not been cleared and released
were shipped to another camp on the Isle of Man. After his
release, Wilhelm Jondorf was reunited with his sons and
moved to London, where he died in 1957. The camp was
used briefly to accommodate Italian prisoners of war, some
of whom worked on local farms, before that closed in 1941.
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During the 1914 - 1918 war the common provided accommodation for around 30,000
men who were engaged in military trench warfare training before being sent to the frontlines
- many would not have returned home. The common was covered in timber huts, some
of them clad in corrugated iron sheets. The camp had electricity before the nearby town
of Whitchurch, as well as shops, a YMCA centre, a Salvation Army hut, a cinema, an
entertainment troupe and its own railway branch line and station. The trenches were situated
mainly on land adjoining the common.
There was also a 609 bed military hospital with an operating theatre, shown below. A
chemist shop was run throughout the war by Sgt Bill Edwards of the Cheshire Regiment,
and he is shown in the photograph in his shop. Some of the men who died whilst in the
hospital are buried in local churchyards.
Entertainers
Battalions or brigades from regiments based here included the King’s
Shropshire Light Infantry, Cheshire, Royal Artillery, South Wales Borderers,
Welsh, Manchester, East Lancashire, South Lancashire, Lancashire
Fusiliers and the Highland Light Infantry. In Whitchurch the Highland
Light Infantry was notorious as they arrived at 2am one morning and
marched through the town with a full band including bagpipes playling.
Training took around six weeks, and included marching to nearby
Hawkstone Park and back, drill, rifle shooting and grenade throwing.
Many of the men wrote postcards home showing views of the camp.
Local families would invite the soldiers into their homes for meals, and
the camp provided opportunities for local businesses and farms.
Operating theatre
Chemist’s shop
At the end of the war the camp was used as a
demobilisation centre in 1919 for thousands of troops
to enable them to re-enter civilian life. Men were given
clothes and shoes to the value of two pounds, twelve
shillings and sixpence plus a gratuity depending on rank
- Sgt Edwards’ demob account is shown here. Then the
common was returned to heathland, with all the structures
from the camp dismantled and removed, with some
of the huts being used locally as sheds, workshops and
even houses.
One of the soldiers stationed here in World War One was Norval Sinclair
Marley. Little is known about his life, but, when he was about 60 years
old, he married Cedella Booker, who was about 18 years old, in
Jamaica, where he worked as a plantation overseer. The couple had
one child, a son born on 6th February 1945 called Nesta Robert Marley,
who came to be known as Bob Marley. Shortly afterwards the couple
separated and Norval died when Bob was about 10 years old - Bob
later said he never really got to know his father. Although he died when
he was just 36 years old, Bob Marley remains the worldís most renowned
performer of reggae and ska music.
For more information on the Partnership
or to find out how to get involved
call us on 01743 284274
themeresandmosses.co.uk
The first known evidence of human habitation here are the fragments of a
Bronze Age cinerary urn which contained human bone following cremation.
They are around 5,000 years old and were found during World War 1 by a
member of the Royal Army Medical Corps and are now at the Ludlow Museum
resource Centre.
Both the A49 and the A41, which bisects the common, were Roman roads.
The common is known to have been used to muster troops in the thirteenth
century when King John fought the Welsh rebels led by Llewellyn the Great,
and when Prince Rupert of the Rhine commanded Royalist forces in the English
Civil War.
This is registered common land, and one of its characteristics is that designated local
properties have rights of common attached.
After World War One the common was restored and all
structures from the camp were removed. This was not the
case after World War Two, however, with many of the
airfield structures remaining in situ. This included the runways,
resulting in many local people learning to drive along the
main runway, until they were hacked up and mostly
removed in the 1970s. Around this time, however, increasing
areas of the common were let as agricultural tenancies,
and much of the heathland habitat was ploughed up
and destroyed. Thousands of tonnes of manures and
fertilisers, including chicken waste, were applied to feed
the nutrient-poor soils to grow crops of potatoes, wheat,
beans and maize, and scant attention was paid to the
rights of the commoners.
In the 1990s the owners submitted a planning application to extract 15 million tonnes
of sand and gravel from the common. This galvanised Butterfly Conservation, the Prees
Heath commoners, Shropshire and Cheshire Wildlife Trusts and local residents to form
the Save Prees Heath Common Campaign Group, which
successfully fought to see the application rejected. Local writer Eleanor
Cooke wrote a booklet portraying poetically the common’s past and its
people, which was featured on BBC Radio 4.
Commeners unable to exercise their
grazing rights on an area ploughed
to grow potatoes
One of the leading campaigners and also a commoner, who knew,
understood and felt passionately about the common and the rights of the
commoners, was Reg Moreland, who often used to recite this verse:
In the case of Prees Heath Common, also sometimes known as Whitchurch Heath
Common, this includes rights to graze animals, with the type and number of animals
varying with each property, and the rights to remove brushwood, turf and sand.
These rights exist in perpetuity, although in recent years the increase in motor traffic
on the A49 and A41, the ploughing up of large parts of the common and changes
in lifestyles have made exercising those rights more difficult.
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But lets the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose.
English Nature (now known as Natural England) designated key areas as a Site of Special
Scientific Interest in 1991. Steps began to be taken by Butterfly Conservation, including
volunteers from its West Midlands Branch, to purchase the western half of the common
this side of the A41, which, after several false starts, was finally secured on 30th May 2006.
The official opening by Martin Warren, Chief Executive of Butterfly Conservation, took place
on 4th July 2007.
Work began to try to restore the former arable fields back
to heathland and acid grassland. After analysis of the soils
found very high levels of undesirable elements it was decided to invert the soil profile by
deep ploughing, thereby burying the hugely enriched soils and exposing the sandy subsoil.
On some areas heather brash containing seed was
obtained from Cannock Chase and The Long Mynd and
spread using a muck spreader, and the results to date
show some successful re-creation of lowland heath. On
other areas wildflower and grass seed has been sown.
Spreading heather brash
The common has always been a popular place for
recreation and families used to come here for days-out
and picnics. There used to be an open-air swimming pool
here as well as a golf course, horse racing and cricket
and football pitches. Gypsies would draw up their horsedrawn wagons here.
The common is now designated as Open Access Land,
and this means that the public has a right to walk wherever
they wish, although they have to keep dogs on short leads
between 1st March and 31st July to protect ground-nesting
birds such as Skylarks, hundreds of which used to be here.
The common was, and still is, an important public amenity.
Re-created heathland
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Soil inversion by deep ploughing
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A sym b o l o f
The Silver-studded Blue butterfly is characteristic of English lowland heaths, and has become a symbol of
this sadly diminishing habitat. The butterfly declined enormously during the twentieth century and is now
virtually absent from four-fifths of its former range, due mainly to the destruction of heathland. Colonies
are not confined to heathland, however, and they also breed on some coastal dunes in south-west England
and on limestone, notably as a separate subspecies on the Great Orme on the north Wales coast.
Silver-studded Blues
at Prees Heath
The butterflies start to emerge in most
years in mid June, and will be on the wing
until the end of July. The males are a
lead-coloured blue, whereas the females
are brown with a variable amount of blue
on their wings. An experienced eye is
needed to distinguish them from the
Common Blue, which is also present here,
and the flight seasons can tend to overlap
slightly.
The male Silver-studded Blues mate with
the females, and the females lay their
eggs mainly on either bell heather or
common heather, although they will also
use gorse, broom and bird’s-foot trefoil.
The eggs are 0.8mm in
diameter, circular and
disc-shaped in shape,
with a beautiful pattern
and a dimple in the
centre. It is believed that the
female will detect the presence of a nest
of the black ant, Lasius niger, nearby in
laying her eggs.
The eggs remain in place
throughout the winter and
hatch in the spring as a tiny
caterpillar, which nibbles its
way out of its shell. The
caterpillars are immediately
attractive to the ants, and
they pick them up and carry
them into their nests. The
caterpillars feed principally on heathers, and are attended
by the ants which tap the caterpillars with their antennae
to stimulate them to produce sugary fluids and possibly
other secretions which the ants find hugely attractive there is still much to learn about this complex interaction.
The ants protect the
caterpillar from being
predated by spiders and
parasitised by species of
tiny wasps, which will inject
their eggs into the body of
the caterpillar - the
protection afforded by the
ants is not always
successful. The caterpillars
pupate in an ants nest - healthy chrysalises are green
in colour, whilst those that contain a parasitic host turn
brown - with the ants continuing to tend them. During
pupation their caterpillar bodies are re-formed into that
of an adult butterfly, although certain parts remain intact.
The adult butterfly usually
emerges from its chrysalis early
in the morning of a warm day.
It climbs a few centimetres up a
stem of vegetation, with its body
wet with droplets of liquid. The
ants find this liquid highly attractive
and they form an accompanying
posse, running back and forth
over the head, thorax and body
whilst the butterfly remains
motionless - it is believed that this aspect is not repeated
with any other butterfly. The presence of ants is thus
central to all four stages (egg, caterpillar, chrysalis and
adult) of the Silver-studded Blue’s life. The butterfly cannot
fly for the first 30 - 60 minutes after emergence until it
has pumped up its wings, with the ants continuing to
offer protection, and then it is ready to fly off and find
a mate.
The butterfly forms very dense colonies, and often
hundreds can be seen on warm, sunny days. They are
very sedentary, with individuals fluttering low over the
heather, rarely going very far from where they emerged.
Bell heather, which starts to flower in June, provides the
main source of nectar. By the time common heather
flowers in August the butterflies will be over.
Dry lowland heaths are characterised by
impoverished, acidic and sandy soils. They
support unique plant communities featuring
heathers, gorse, broom, fine grasses,
wildflowers, scattered trees and bushes and
many mosses and lichens. They also support
important bird species, many of which are
in decline, reptiles and a huge range of
invertebrates. Bare ground, which can be
warmer than vegetated areas, and which
the rabbits help to create, provides an
important habitat for many small creatures.
With the decline of traditional management
by commoners turning out their grazing
animals, much of the task of keeping heaths
in good condition now involves suppressing
the growth of vegetation mechanically or
with a human workforce.
Lowland
Heath
North-western Europe s lowland heath
has been lost since 1800. What remains in
the UK forms around 20% of this fragile habitat
in the world, so the conser vation of what we
still have and the restoration where possible
of what has disappeared is a clear
responsibility, and this underlines the
significance of the work being
carried out by Butterfly
Conservation.
For more information on the Partnership
or to find out how to get involved
call us on 01743 284274
themeresandmosses.co.uk
Text and illustrations are taken with kind
permission from ‘The Butterflies of Britain
& Ireland’ by Jeremy Thomas and
Richard Lewington (2010) published by
British Wildlife Publishing and from a study
of the ecology of the Silver-studded Blue
at Prees Heath by Jenny Joy.