(Photo credit: Graham Innes- click link for his Flickr)
Welcome to the sick quarters of RAF High Ercall.
It's not usually my style to open with someone else's shot but credit goes to Graham Innes. As soon as I saw his drone photo I knew it was exactly what I needed, and would make a superb establishing shot of the building. I don't have a drone, nor should I be trusted with piloting one, or anything for that matter, but they are undeniably useful sometimes.
As you can see, the sick quarters is shaped sort of like a backwards F. It's not immediately obvious due to the vegetation, but the lower arm is connected via a small diagonal passage. This is apparently the "decontamination annex" which sounds exciting. I assume it focused on the removal of chemical and biological contaminants, and making sure that people who came to the hospital were cleaned before they were brought into a room full of sick people. That makes sense.
The sick quarters is actually some distance away from the other buildings of RAF High Ercall, which means it often gets overlooked. In fact on maps of RAF High Ercall, it's rarely included at all. Even the Luftwaffe's dossier of High Ercall doesn't feature it. It's just over the edge of the map.
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(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When I first explored Camelot theme park, I met a couple who showed me their photos of the main buildings at RAF High Ercall, and it looked incredible, but I was late to that party. It's all been repurposed now. I'm disappointed that I missed the opportunity, but not bitter. In urbex, you win some, you lose some. I'm sure there are people out there who look at what I have done, and feel the same way. That's just the nature of the game. Camelot is actually a great example. Nobody is going to climb that roller coaster ever again.
High Ercall's sick quarters, on the other hand, go largely ignored, even by other urbexers. The entire complex is just quietly tucked out of the way. Of course it's only a matter of time before someone does something with it, so I decided to get there first.
So this is the top branch of the backwards F. It's most notable feature is a water tower. In the 1940s this building would have been full of patient beds, but on my visit, it was full of rubble. There were just piles of bricks all over the floor, and my photos of it seem to have disappeared mysteriously. They're probably mis-filed somewhere, and I'll probably stumble across them in five years when I'm working on some other blog. But until then, this is what we've got. Fortunately my interior shots of the rest of the building are still with us. I'm not completely lacking in organisational ability.
While the airfield itself started construction in 1938, this hospital wasn't built until 1941. But even then, it was expected to be obsolete and demolished in about a decade. Its survival into the 21st Century makes it quite remarkable from a heritage standpoint, and I actually think it deserves better than to quietly rot away. Structurally it's still sound, and it even has a bomb shelter.
Despite its dilapidated condition, it seems that it has been used for storing farm equipment. But even then, there's not much of it here, and it's all in a state of similar decay.
Prior to my visit there was actually another building. It's long gone, but it does show up on old streetview images from 2009. My partner found a photo of it from 1987.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
Apparently this building was the ambulance station and also the mortuary. I'm not sure how it can be both, but this isn't a case of conflicting sources. The same source claims it was both.
My only guess is that when it came to plane mishaps, a lot of people were dead before they made it here, and it was just far easier to just get them out of the ambulance and into the mortuary straight away. But having never seen the interior of this building, I don't know.
It sure is cool to see this place still derelict nearly four decades ago. Look closely and you can see a ladder on the water tower. Now that would have been fun to get a view from!
It's time to slip inside the remaining buildings!
So, referring back to the opening drone shot, I'm entering through the top right corner into the vertical bit of the F-shaped building. The door to the left goes further down this building, while the dark shadowy doorways lead to the decontamination annex and the portion with the water tower.
Up at this end of the building, it's mostly just smaller rooms that I presume were offices for the hospital staff. There was probably a kitchen and store rooms too.
As far as decay goes, it's quite pretty. The wall has collapsed inward, and nature has just clawed its way in.
The takeover of nature is evident throughout the building. Ivy is creeping all over the floor, and I love it.
RAF High Ercall has quite an interesting history, compared to other old airfields in Shropshire. During the war it also served as a Nightfighter station. That is, planes that were modified to be more effective for night time missions.
The nightfighters of High Ercall were quite successful, shooting down five luftwaffe bombers during the war. Four of these were by a squadron led by Wing Commander Max Aitken, the son of the minister of aircraft production. Max Aitken was something of a legend. It's said that he once flew his plane under Ironbridge's titular iron bridge. His logbook, now in an RAF museum, doesn't support this story, but it's still a testament to his skills and reputation that such seemingly insane and borderline suicidal stunts have been attributed to him.
Max Aitken. (Photo not mine, obviously)
As a nightfighter station, High Ercall temporarily hosting the top-secret and retrospectively ridiculous unit codenamed Turbinlite in June 1942. That is, some aircraft were fitted with giant torches, with the aim of illuminating attacking jets so that the accompanying aircraft could shoot them down. This proved to be too much of a faff to efficiently co-ordinate, and eventually advancements in radar technology made the whole concept obsolete.
(Photo of the Turbinlite taken from Wikipedia)
But for a time, Turbinlite was an intriguing prospect, and while it was stationed at High Ercall, it attracted King George VI to Shropshire to check it out. Here he is greeting the troops.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
What I love about this shot is that they've clumsily brushed out the Turbinlite aircraft in the background, because it was top secret and the media didn't want even a background image of it falling into enemy hands, just in case the Nazis decided to make their own giant flying torch.
I find the entire concept quite entertaining. Whenever we see "Top secret," it makes us think of really shady shit, like Area 51 and MK Ultra. What if Area 51 is just where they stick flashlights on planes?
But as amusing as the idea is, it doesn't really have much to do with the sick quarters. Although I imagine a top secret military operation, regardless of how silly it might sound, wouldn't publicise any medical mishaps. Fortunately, not all of the incidents at High Ercall were top secret.
Here we have an antique scale for weighing potato sacks.
In 1944, a chap stationed here named Dennis Moore claimed that there was actually a very low incident rate at High Ercall. The size of the hospital certainly does indicate that. In June 1942 High Ercall had 2,183 people stationed there, including 225 WAAFs and 309 Americans. I think if injuries and sickness were really that prevalent, then the hospital would need to be bigger.
The airfield was bombed in March 1941, but with no casualties and very minor damage, unless one includes the water pipes. If the Germans achieved anything, it was causing the airfields toilets to freeze over in the cold weather.
That October, two Czechs named Josef Kloboucnik and Sgt Josef Klvacek requested permission to land at High Ercall. Their request was denied due to there being too many obstructions on the runway. They instead tried to make it to Atcham before crashing nearby. Their plane was found to have bullet holes, indicating that they had been in some sort of aerial skirmish, and their bodies were allegedly taken to the mortuary here for a bit.
Two other men who were likely brought to the mortuary here were Geoffrey Butcher and his radio operator Irwin Wiskar. They crashed a mile away during a night training exercise in May 1941. Geoffrey Butcher had been offered a scholarship at Oxford University just before the war broke out. He never got to explore his potential there.
Geoffrey Butcher (Photo not mine, obviously)
The biggest incidents seemed to be related to mishaps on the airfield. Perhaps the most colourful case to pass through the mortuary was in December 1941 when a man tripped and fell onto the planes propeller while removing the wedge that they stick under the aircrafts wheels to stop it rolling away. That probably gave the folks at the mortuary some interesting work, to say the least. But Dennis Moore claims that most accidents were caused by the vehicles hitting obstacles, and he seems to be right.
In June 1942 an American pilot collided with a lorry, and in November a 21-year-old former butcher named Desmond Gale landed his Hurricane plane only for it to swerve off the runway, hit a concrete slab and flip over.
And then there's the story of Jim Harris. In August 1942 he noticed that a plane was out of control and about to hit the building that he was working in. He screamed for everyone to run, but he then froze in the doorway while everyone else scrambled. Despite heading right for him, the planes nose suddenly plunged downwards, and the aircraft crashed and burst into flames, with its engines landing on either side of Jim. At first everyone thought Jim was dead, and were amazed to see him emerge unscathed. The pilots had actually plunged the plane downwards on purpose. They were doomed anyway, but their last action was saving the people in the building.
Jim Harris in an aircraft, looking more chilled than he was on the day he almost died.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
These people were, of course, brought to the mortuary. I don't know much about the people who were treated in the actual hospital. I'm sure they were plentiful, but unfortunately deaths make the headlines more often than injuries and illness.
I did find one story of a crew of ten who made an emergency landing at High Ercall and needed their wounds treated after a battle above France in September 1943. And then after the war, a planes engine failed as it was making its way down the runway. The plane kept driving along and crashed. That pilot being treated here for mild injury.
There's minimal information out there, but I assume this place was a lot busier than that.
This is the passageway to the decontamination annex, and it is deliciously creepy. It clearly served some sort of purpose as an agricultural store room but the ivy is reaching in, and if left undisturbed could someday form a veil to pass through to get to the rest of the facility.
In the corner on the floor we can see the remains of shower fixtures.
It's not the best after eighty years of being disused, but we can clearly see where the showers once were in this decontamination unit, and that's pretty cool. People being admitted into the hospital would have been taken here first, showered and changed into clean garments before entering the main ward.
This corridor leads down to the bottom of the vertical part of the F-shaped building, and I guess as far as relics go it's pretty interesting.
Evidently this is the part that the farmer used the most, although even these carts look pretty ancient.
In the 1940s this room would have been full of beds for patients. I haven't been able to find any vintage internal shots of this particular sick quarters, but I'll include one from another airfield to give a rough idea of how this area may have looked.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
It's not clear when High Ercall hospital closed, but I assume it was shortly before the airfield itself. Following the war, things predictably calmed down a bit. In 1951, High Ercall began serving as a relief landing ground for any training flights that couldn't make it back to their main base, but primarily it was just used for storing and scrapping old aircraft. It was said that during this time it held over 1,700 planes, and some were actually sold for ridiculously low prices to whoever wanted one. The last planes left in 1957 and the airfield closed for good in 1962. While many of the hangars and buildings have been repurposed, the hospital seems to have gone untouched.
The last part of the hospital, and personally my favourite bit, is the air raid shelter.
Seriously, who doesn't love an air raid shelter?
It's so cool to see this still intact. Back in the 1940s, when the siren went off, the nursing staff and presumably any able-bodied patient would head for this shelter to wait out the bombing. It's entirely likely that they came here during the bombing in 1941.
I am curious about how anyone in hospital with a crippling injury would have made it down here. These shelters really only cater to the able-bodied.
Air raid shelters are always pretty cramped, even when it's just me down here, but I love that this one is still accessible. I think it's important to see it, and get a glimpse of what conditions were like. Just picture this shelter packed with people, waiting out the blitz. All they'd be able to hear is the siren wailing, the sound of overhead aircraft, and the dropping of bombs in the distance. They'd have no option other than to wait it out, wondering about the extent of the devastation on the surface. Their homes might be destroyed and their loved ones might be dead, and they'd be kept wondering until the blitz ended.
And that's why I really dislike the cringey clickbait taglines that Youtubers like to slap on their videos. The truth is enough. It doesn't need sensationalising. Let these people keep their dignity.
That's all I have for the RAF Sick Quarters. In my opinion it's a very important location from a heritage standpoint, and it absolutely deserves more than this. Those who worked tirelessly to tend to the sick and the injured deserve to have their efforts remembered.
Development was proposed in 2023 with the aim of making the old sick quarters into four houses. This was approved with the understanding that it would be respectful to the location's history. It's not a listed building but it is regarded as a heritage asset. The plan was to convert the buildings respectfully, and retain historic features like the water tower, and also have information boards explaining the history of the site. The air raid shelter was to be turned into a bat roost.
It all sounds pretty cool.
But as is often the case, the developers don't give a shit about British heritage or history. This year one of the buildings was just flat-out demolished instead of renovated, and suddenly a whole new construction was underway. The council ordered it all to stop and for the new building to be taken down. It was appealed, but the council stuck to their guns.
It's nice that they care, but it's a little too late. Of course if they'd cared from the start then it wouldn't have fallen into dereliction to begin with.
It's times like this that really reflect why urbex is important. I may have missed the mortuary but I snapped the rest of it before it was gone forever. The fact that trespass is required in order to document history is a greater crime than the trespass itself.
But that's all I've got. In order to stay updated with my blog, the best way is by following me on the quagmire of broken dreams that is social media. I'm on Facebook and Instagram, and Twitter for some reason. But my hope is that the likes of Bluesky (what Twitter should be) Vero (what Instagram should be) and Cara (Instagram for artists) take off and give us some actual positive social media. I'm on those too, waiting patiently as they grow.
Thanks for reading!
