[tom83]

Hi all, just a little bit more History on this site. RAF Croft was origionally built as a Naval Training Centre called HMS Gosling. Commissioned on the 1st July 1942 they had facilities for the training of Air Fitters, Air Mechanics, Radio Mechanics, and Royal Marine Trainee's. HMS Gosling was a huge training facility with 5 large camps around the Croft site. Camp 1 was situated under the Housing estate in Croft, with the Main Entrance sited opposite Spring Lane. Camp 2 is now under Risley Prison, Camp 3 is the site in this thread, Camp 4 was situated in Lowton, and Camp 5 was situated in Glazebrook. The Glazebrook site has now been totally demolished, but the foundations of buildings still exist, and can be seen quite clearly on Google earth. Also Glazebrook Conservative Club is almost identical to the Thearter Building at Croft, Camp 3.

HMS Aerial was commissioned on 8th October 1942 at Cultcheth as extra housing accomodation for HMS Gosling.

On the 31st March 1947 the sites were paid off, sites 1,2 and 4 were bought by various development companies, site 3 in Croft was taken over by the RAF, and site 5 was left to ruin, before being pulled down last year.