Today
Because of the importance of this aerodrome, Bomber Command Heritage have chosen the site as the best canvas for it's vision of an Education Centre/Museum dedicated to telling the story of RAF Bomber Command of the WWII period. Now that MoD are selling the site, Cherwell District Council have formed a parnership with Bomber Command Heritage to make this project happen. There is risk that the site may be split, thus losing a highly important site of Architectural military history in the process.
The Ministry of Defence still owns part of the site, that is used for British Army training, but has now been placed on the market for sale. In June 2004, the RAF Gliding and Soaring Association moved to RAF Halton. The main use of the site is now civilian gliding, being home to both a newly-reformed (July 2004) Windrushers Gliding Club, who lease the site, and also the Oxford University Gliding Club and Cranfield University Gliding Club, as sub-sections within the Windrushers club.
The airfield is one of the finest examples of an unmodified pre-war RAF station still almost completely in existence, with many listed buildings. The brick-built 1934 "Fort" type 1959/34 control tower survives, as do the two C-type and two A-type aircraft hangars.
In the late 1990s, plans were proposed to develop the airfield for housing and industry, but they were abandoned due to strong local opposition and the historic nature of the site. In 2002, Cherwell District Council listed the area as a Conservation area.
Read more about this topic: Bicester Airfield
Famous quotes containing the word today:
“... today ... photographers prefer disfigurement to adornment. It is now chic to do your worst to people.”
—Margaret Anderson (1886–1973)
“In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Everything here below beneath the sun is subject to continual change; and perhaps there is nothing which can be called more inconstant than opinion, which turns round in an everlasting circle like the wheel of fortune. He who reaps praise today is overwhelmed with biting censure tomorrow; today we trample under foot the man who tomorrow will be raised far above us.”
—E.T.A.W. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus Wilhelm)