The Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington is gearing up for a bumper birthday, as the popular attraction marks its fortieth birthday in 2025. The museum began in the 1980s at the derelict site near York, having been an RAF bomber base during World War II, but then abandoned. There were mountains of rubble from demolished buildings, every remaining building was full of broken glass and more than thirty years of undergrowth covered the paths and perimeter track where Halifax bombers had once taxied. In April of 1985, a team of local people, historians, and aircraft enthusiasts, began clearing the site with one aim: to preserve it as a museum and a memorial to RAF and other allied bomber crews.
With the museum now welcoming around 70,000 visitors a year, plans are underway for a new exhibition looking back at its history, as well as an anniversary event in August. The exhibition, due to open later this year, will include original photos and documents from the 1980s, showing how the site was cleared and developed. Among these are the notebook used by one of the founders, Rachel Semlyen MBE, now Chair of Trustees, to take minutes at the first meetings to plan out the museum
The event on August 11th will mark exactly 40 years since the Yorkshire Air Museum held its first Open Day on the newly cleared site. It’s hoped the same biplane, a Blackburn B2, that flew over the Elvington site on that day in 1985 will make a return visit for the occasion. Any visitors who were born in 1985 will also be admitted at a special reduced rate. The museum also wants to hear from former volunteers and supporters, who can share their memories and attend the August 11th event. The slogan for the anniversary year is: “Celebrating the Past, Securing the Future.”
“To mark this auspicious year, in 2025 we are aiming to celebrate what has been achieved over forty years but also look forward to what now needs to be done to secure the future of this much-loved organization,” said Museum’s Chair of Trustees, Rachel Semlyen MBE. “The museum was truly a grass-roots enterprise, started and continued for many years by volunteers to save the site and turn it into a museum and memorial. Now we employ full and part time staff, supported by around 100 volunteers, who run the museum day to day and help it develop for the future.”
In recent months, the Yorkshire Air Museum has added to its aircraft collection with a Shorts Tucano trainer that once flew from RAF Linton on Ouse near York, as well as an Avro Shackleton anti-submarine aircraft that was moved to Elvington from Coventry Airport in sections and is now being reassembled. For more information, visit the Yorkshire Air Museum website.
