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NFLA Secretary Richard Outram was proud recently to participate in a ceremony (31 August) at which a new memorial was unveiled to honour the service of the many personnel once based at a Second World War RAF airbase which may become the preferred site for a nuclear waste dump.
The timing is particularly poignant for, whilst once RAF Millom fought off an attack by a Luftwaffe bomber, the former airfield now faces a graver threat from nearer home.
At the end of January, Nuclear Waste Services designated that part of the airfield not occupied by His Majesty’s Prison Haverigg as its primary Area of Focus in the South Copeland GDF Search Area. This could be the future location for a surface facility that would receive nuclear waste shipments as part of the plan to establish a Geological Disposal Facility.
NWS is carrying out its own ongoing investigations to determine its ‘suitability’, but for Richard an investigation into the airbase’s rich wartime history quickly convinced him that its important heritage should be memorialised whatever the future may bring.
You can read about that history in our previous NFLA media release: https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/hidden-history-of-raf-airfield-may-be-lost-in-latest-nuke-dump-plan/
A Google search soon brought Richard into contact with a unique charity, the Airfields of Britain Conservation Trust, which erects impressive granite memorials at former airfields https://www.abct.org.uk. A telephone conversation with charity founder Kenneth Bannerman soon established that it would be entirely possible to erect such a memorial for Millom in the summer, and liaison with the prison authorities brought Richard into contact with staff members who were equally enthusiastic to make it happen.
On the sunny morning of 31 August, the plan to fruition when at 11am a 1.4-ton plinth made of high-quality Indian granite and inscribed with the start and end dates of RAF Millom’s operational history was unveiled at a location just outside the prison gates.
Richard was especially touched to see his own name inscribed on the memorial, which also fittingly highlighted, in this former place of conflict his second role as UK / Ireland Mayors for Peace Chapter Secretary.
Amongst the almost fifty guests at the unveiling were local former veterans, relatives of former RAF and civilian personnel who had served at the airbase, civic dignitaries including the Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Millom Town Council Cllrs Simone Faulkner and Joan Kellett, the Chair of Millom Without Parish Council Cllr Carl Carrington, and Cumberland Councillors Bob Kelly and Andy Pratt, and prison staff.
Especially welcome were the widow of the late John Nixon and members of the Nixon family.
John Nixon, a former prison officer at HMP Haverigg, played an instrumental role in documenting the history of the airbase in his book ‘The History of RAF Millom and the Genesis of RAF Mountain Rescue’ https://amzn.eu/d/dXm5LGt and in his retirement opened an air museum on site in buildings leased from the Prison Service.
Sadly, John died in March of this year, so it was only fitting that Kenneth and Richard invited Mr Nixon’s son and daughter to join them in unveiling the memorial in remembrance of his pioneering work.
Video footage of the event (credit: ABCT) can be found on You Tube at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4WfR61aG4k
After the ceremony, guests were invited to partake of refreshments in the nearby café nearly refurbished by prisoners with an RAF theme. The memorial, café and the adjoining shop with its fresh produce grown by green-fingered members of the prison population are open to the public.
Nixon family members were also escorted into the prison grounds to view the original memorial established by Mr Nixon whilst he was in service at HMP Haverigg.
It was especially pleasing to hear that the prison now intends to develop a small building in which to display some exhibits from the former airbase, as well as sell copies of Mr Nixon’s books covering the history of RAF Millom and other airbases in Cumbria.
The NFLAs look forward to these developments.
During his visit to Haverigg and Millom, Richard also had the opportunity to visit the churchyards of St Lukes and St Georges to pay his respects to the aircrew – British, Australian, Canadian and Polish – interred after being killed during service at RAF Millom.
For more information, please contact NFLA Secretary Richard Outram by email to richard.outram@manchester.gov.uk
NFLA/ Mayors for Peace Chapter Secretary Richard Outram’s speech at the ceremony:
Good morning, Ladies and Gentlemen,
PERSONAL INTRODUCTION
Let me start with a dramatic announcement.
You are standing on the target site for an atomic bomb!
That got your attention.
As it did the British army and RAF personnel who at the start of the Cold War arrived at RAF Millom in gritty anticipation of some testing training.
In a place called Doomtown. For that is what RAF Millom became.
For the curious amongst you a short video can be found on You Tube under ‘Doomtown AKA Downtown’ from 1955 which is a Pathe News reel.
The news reel opens with a description of Doomtown
‘A desert of wrecked houses on the Cumbrian coast where men battle grimly against fire and smoke, where rescue squads check each other cautiously for radioactivity, the deadly aftermath of an atom bomb. This is what nuclear war means’.
The disused RAF Millom became ‘Britain’s biggest mobile defence training centre’, a make-believe town ‘destroyed’ by an atomic bomb where ‘blooded, bruised and broken’ make-believe casualties could be found amidst the rubble by service personnel being trained how to evacuate and treat them with great care.
And thereafter – it being England – the casualties and their rescuers were then treated to tea and cake at the NAAFI.
That’s how many thousands of National Servicemen spent their final month in training, learning rescue methods in the atomic age.
RAF Millom was of course the right place to bring them for it was the home of modern mountain rescue methods first developed during the Second World War; methods then readily transferred to the rigours of Doomtown.
But I am going to leave it to Ken(neth Bannerman, founder of the Airfields of Britain Conservation Trust) to tell you more about RAF Millom as a military base.
Suffice it to say that my professional interest on discovering Millom had been Doomtown was piqued,
And I guess that brought us all here today.
For it was in my professional capacity working as Secretary for the UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities that I first began researching the history of RAF Millom.
When this site was, at the start of 2025, designated an Area of Focus by an organisation called Nuclear Waste Services which is charged with finding a location for a repository to hold Britain’s legacy and future radioactive waste.
This Area of Focus will be subject to many investigations as to its suitability.
But my focus was instead upon the operational history of RAF Millom and the legacy of this airbase.
I learned about the courage of the brave men and women – many from other nations like Poland and the United States – who came here to learn to fly.
And tragically to sometimes perish in terrible accidents amidst the challenging terrain and the sometimes-treacherous weather we find in Cumbria.
And I thought perhaps there was a way of marking their service and their sacrifice?
This brought me into contact with the sterling work done by former Haverigg Prison Officer John Nixon, who as an author documented the history of RAF Millom and many of the other airbases in Cumbria, and who established an air museum and a first memorial on this site.
Very sadly John died recently, but I would like to pay tribute to him as the pioneer and to express how grateful and delighted I am that we are joined today by members of John’s family.
My research also brought me into contact with Kenneth Bannerman and the Airfields of Britain Conservation Trust and the incredible work that he and the Trust do to mark the service and sacrifice of our past servicemen and women throughout the land.
Kenneth’s immediate ‘can-do’ enthusiasm coupled with the ready support and aid of the staff at HMP Haverigg have made all this possible. And for this I thank them.
And so here we are.
Let us now spend a moment to reflect on what this splendid memorial means.
For it is a fitting epitaph.
And I am confident that in the decades to come it shall serve as a fitting reminder.
That in this place,
When Europe was engulfed by a monstrous evil,
And Britain was in its greatest peril,
Many thousands of men and women came here to serve selflessly their Country, their King and the cause of Freedom.
The Pathe News reel referred to in Richard’s Speech can be found on You Tube and is titled ‘Doom Town AKA Down Town (1955)’.
https://youtu.be/Q6t_NYfZQbE?si=LEznjPrvY-m_3dZU
It depicts the aftermath of an atom bomb attack on an unspecified town, rather than on Millom.
NFLA / Mayors for Peace Chapter Secretary Richard Outram speaking, with Kenneth Bannerman from ABCT (Credit: Jan Bridget).
Kenneth and Richard with Nixon family members unveiling the memorial (Credit: ABCT).
The memorial up close (own photo).
Lest we forget: the graves of aircrew – here mostly Australian and Canadian – at St Lukes Church, Haverigg (own photo).
