Over the intervening years this undertaking has been re-stated from time to time by various Government departments who have been responsible for authorising this special occupancy. Lord Nugent is recorded in Hansard as saying: "The history of the airfield is that it was originally requisitioned in wartime in 1943 for wartime purposes and from that time there has been a clear undertaking that when it was no longer required for these purposes it would be returned for its pre-war agricultural use. However the matter was referred to in a debate in Parliament at the time the land was sold back to Lord Lytton (the inheritor of the Ockham Park Estate) in 1980 and recorded in Hansard. It has been generally believed and accepted that HM Government gave an undertaking to restore the land to its pre-war condition when it was returned to its original owners.Īs the land was not registered at HM Land Registry until 1981, the wartime transfers of the land and any accompanying conditions are not recorded at HM Land Registry.
The farm tenants vacated their houses to comply with the government's requirements. Land was taken mainly from Hyde, Stratford and Corsair farms - with land contributed by other tenants. Land was contributed mainly by the Ockham Park Estate, which at the time owned most of the Village of Ockham, Surrey. The land on which this airstrip was built was requisitioned in 1942 during WW2.