Fascinating pictures reveal how this popular Sheffield retail park was once a huge military airfield
These now and then pictures of Norton in Sheffield show part of the city’s flying history in the early days of the Royal Flying Corps.
The 1919 picture shows aircraft on the No 2 (Northern) Aircraft Repair Depot at RFC Greenhill – the RFC was the forerunner to the Royal Air Force. The site is now part of St James Retail Park.
The 1995 book Norton in Wartime by Norton History Group says the depot was part of Coal Aston Aerodrome. It was neither at Coal Aston nor an aerodrome, as planes were only briefly operational from there.
Norton in Wartime says: “The Coal Aston site eventually covered a wide area from Jordanthorpe House in the east to the present Greenhill Avenue in the west and from Little Norton in the north to the fields well down Dyche Lane towards Coal Aston in the south.”
There were three camps housing personnel, different depots and the original landing ground. German prisoners of war also worked there.
