by PhilDodd » Tue Nov 22, 2016 3:46 pm
I have just found this thread and see that it is quite old, but hope that I am not too late to add my bit.
I was born and brought up in Kinloch Road, Renfrew, which was quite close to Renfrew Airport and have some fond memories of the place. I was 11 when it closed.
My mother was also born and brought up in Renfrew but my father was English. His father (my Grandfather) worked for the Air Ministry and specialised in radios used to communicate with aircraft and radio navigation aids. Around the mid-1930s, he was sent to work at Renfrew Airport and he brought his family with him. He rented a house on Wright Street which backed onto my mother’s family house on Ross Avenue which is how my Mum & Dad met when they were in their early teens. Granddad was only there for about 18 months and I suspect he was involved with installing the Radio Systems for the Airport.
Dad joined the RAF in the late 1930s and then about 1953 he was discharged and returned to Renfrew with my mum, who he had married by then, and went to work for Scottish Aviation at Renfrew Airport. His Identical Twin Brother also worked at the airport as an aircraft engineer for B.E.A. but by the mid-1950s, he was moved to their main maintenance base at Heathrow. Incidentally, my grandfather was also involved in the original development of Heathrow Airport.
When Renfrew Airport closed, Scottish Aviation moved to Prestwick Airport and Dad then commuted there daily by car for the rest of his working life.
I have good memories of regularly walking past a wooden fence at the Cockles Loan end of Sandy Road and seeing the aircraft tail fins sticking up where they were parked in an area of the airport, right next to Sandy Road. British Eagle was one of my favourite ones.
We also flew from Renfrew Airport once, down to Heathrow to visit by Grandparents and Uncle’s family. I think that it was a Viscount or Vanguard that we went in. To get to the aeroplane at Renfrew, we had to walk out to it on the apron, through the café’s outdoor seating area that was set up just outside the new terminal on an area of the apron that had low, waist high, barriers around it. You could sit and have drinks right there on the apron, very close to the aeroplanes.
I also remember that Arkleston Road passed close to the threshold of runway 08 and there was a small wooden hut beside the road there. When an aeroplane was taking off or landing over the road, a man would come out of the hut and stop any traffic on the road until the plane has passed.
Occasionally, while the man in the hut was not looking, my friends and I would sneak into the field on the other side of Arkleston Road and hide in the long grass in line with the runway. When an aeroplane passed over we would jump up and try to catch it. It was of course, far too high to possibly catch, but it was low and great fun to see it flying right over us.
I also have memories of being taken to an airshow at Abbotsinch when it was still a RNAS base. During a gap in the flying display, a group of clowns entertained the crowd by trying to fly on a bicycle fitted with a pair of wings.
When the M8 was built, I am sure that it was laid over the existing runway. Whether the original concrete was removed first or not, I do not know, but my friends and I managed to cycle along it before it was opened to traffic.
Those were the days. Young children could roam from home safely without their parent’s supervision and Health and Safety had not yet banned everything that was fun.