Marsham – Relief Landing Ground

This is rather lovely, a memorial placed here in 2017 to mark that the field behind Marsham Church was used by the Royal Flying Corps between 1915 and 1916. The memorial is placed between the church and the new burial ground and I wouldn’t have known about the field’s past use without it as there are no other obvious clues that it was there.

Here’s the field, apparently known as Whites when it was in operation. It was closed in October 1916, when the training ground was moved to Saxthorpe. There weren’t a great deal of safe places to be if serving in the First World War, but these pilots must have been especially brave as aviation was not exactly developed then and deaths were frequent.

This map is from just before the First World War, the field is to the left of the church. The EDP has a report from the unveiling of the monument in 2017.

Unfortunately, the enclosures maps aren’t available for Marsham which might have indicated if the field was called Whites back in the early nineteenth century. The tithe map above shows the field, but gives no further hints as to the name origin of the field. Although, I approve of more places just being called Whites…..