Stonehenge Aerodrome in 1919: a 3D model from the US National Archives photographs

 Between 1917 and 1921 Stonehenge had an aerodrome for a neighbour, just to the west of the stones on either side of what is now the A303. Almost nothing of it survives on the ground, so I have built a 3D model of its buildings as they stood in early 1919. You can walk round it in your browser here:

Stonehenge Aerodrome, 1919: 3D model

The photographs

The starting point was a set of photographs taken on 20 February 1919 by Lt Sintzenich of the US Army Signal Corps, now held by the US National Archives (NARA). Each one is linked from the model, and here they are:

• 111-SC-153264: “View, looking east, showing a block of six hangars”, taken from the landing ground, with a biplane in an open shed.
• 111-SC-153265: “General view of landing field, with the Night Bombing School in the background”.
• 111-SC-153266: “View of hangars looking west”.
• 111-SC-153267, 111-SC-153268 and 111-SC-153269: three frames of the “Panorama of Stonehenge Camp, looking from southeast to southwest”.
• 111-SC-153276: a vertical view catalogued as the Night Bombing School. That was the other camp, by Fargo Wood, so its buildings are not laid out in this model.

How it was put together

Photographs alone don't tell you where things were, so the layout comes from maps. I traced 41 buildings from the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, Wiltshire LIV.SW, revised 1923, from the National Library of Scotland, and georeferenced it to the National Grid. Anything put up and taken down before 1923 may well be missing.

The big General Service sheds (the hangars) were set out from the RAF vertical photograph of 24 May 1921, reproduced in Martyn Barber's report Stonehenge Aerodrome and the Stonehenge Landscape (Historic England, 2014). It shows three coupled pairs of sheds end to end, with their ridges running north-east to south-west and the doors on the south-west gable ends. The north-easternmost pair, which I've called D, had gone by 1923, so it isn't on the OS map.

For the photographs, I worked back from the bearings of landmarks in each picture (hangar gables, a mast, huts, distant woods) to find where the camera must have stood. Several were taken from the roof of hangar pair B: the field views from its west corner and the camp panorama from its south corner. Photograph 264 was taken from the ground, out on the landing ground south-west of the row.

Using the model

• Photo pegs: the yellow pegs mark where each photograph was taken. Click one (or the numbered buttons) to see the photograph and stand where the photographer stood.
• Click a building to see its name and where the evidence for it comes from.
• Compass: bottom right, so you don't lose your bearings.
• Plan view with the 1923 map: open the plan with the OS overlay to check the model against the map.
• Shed doors: this view looks into the open shed of pair A, where a little biplane sits, as in photograph 264.

Drag to look around, use the wheel to zoom and right-drag to move.

Credits and corrections

Photographs: Lt Sintzenich, US Army Signal Corps, 1919, US National Archives, public domain. Map: OS six-inch Wiltshire LIV.SW (revised 1923), reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland, CC-BY. Hangar layout from Martyn Barber's 2014 Historic England report. Model by Tim Daw.

This is my best reading of the evidence, and I'm sure there are mistakes. If you know the site, the photographs or the aerodrome's history, and something looks wrong, please tell me in the comments. I'll happily fix it.