King's Cliffe Airfield Museum

15/10/2026

If you know where to look there are still so many little signs of what life was like for the men who served at RAF King’s Cliffe.

09/10/2026

Fantastic that the children local to the airfield get to learn about not just WWII in general but in what happened locally to where they live.
We were delighted to help!

📚 Year 6 have been enjoying their History lessons, which have been brought to life by uniforms gratefully borrowed from King’s Cliffe Airfield Museum. Seeing and exploring these historical items has helped the children gain a deeper understanding of the past and made their learning even more memorable! ⭐👏

04/10/2026

This morning (4th October) members of the King’s Cliffe Airfield Museum team visited the Control Tower and Telephone Exchange building. The purpose of the visit was to take some current images as part of the preparation for our popular Airfield Tours to restart. Details of the tours will be posted on our page.

28/09/2026

A fantastic place to stay. Home to our museum and the new (soon to be completed) King’s Cliffe Airfield Heritage Trail.

Fifty-six lodges tucked into ancient woodland, and every one has its own reason to book. Whichever range you choose, Quality, Premier or V.I.P., you're never far from a woodland trail or a lodge door that opens straight onto the trees.

Forty-three of our lodges come with a private hot tub, plus the Cottage, and several take dogs too. Wherever you land, it's the same ancient woodland waiting outside.

Breathe, explore, relax.

27/09/2026

The Scharnhorst was a German capital ship of World War II, there is still debate as to whether is should be classed as a battleship or battlecruiser. Commissioned in 1939, she featured high speed and heavy armour, optimized for commerce raiding. Operating alongside her sister ship Gneisenau, Scharnhorst severely disrupted Allied shipping lines and famously sank the British aircraft carrier HMS Glorious in 1940.
The two ships travelled through the English Channel in Operation Cerberus in February 1942 in a major embarrasment to the British whose attempts to attack them were all repulsed with heavy losses.
Scharnhorst’s luck finally ran out during the Battle of the North Cape on December 26, 1943. Outmatched and blinded by superior British radar, she was ultimately sunk by an Allied fleet led by the battleship HMS Duke of York, leaving only thirty-six survivors.
At least one of those 36 surviving Kriegsmarine men would end up at King’s Cliffe PoW camp in March 1946. The man would work as a mechanic at the camp for six months before being reassigned to another camp. This is an active line of research for the Museum and we are hoping to identify the man and find out more about him.

24/09/2026

Another workday on the Heritage Trail. Building 59, listed as a store on the airfield plan, is now cleared of vegetation. Located adjacent to the main hangar we currently are investigating what it was actually used for. Traces of red and yellow paint are still visible on the floor slab in places.
King's Cliffe Airfield Museum
Rockingham Forest Park

20/09/2026

The museum has acquired a large bundle of original POW documents. There are three 1946 copies of Unser Postillion - Lagerzeitung Camp 268. This was the Camp newspaper for PoW Camp 268 located at Norduck Farm in Aston Abbotts, Buckinghamshire.

However, more exciting is the 100 pages of re-education and denazification documents considering topics such as German history, democracy, independent newspapers, British politics that was also included in the bundle. This is the type of work that many of the men, both British and German, at the King’s Cliffe PoW camp at Old Sulehay would have been engaged in.

These documents will add to our understanding of how the the work to rehabilitate the German PoWs was undertaken before they were repatriated back to Germany.

17/09/2026

With the King’s Cliffe Airfield Museum being closed for the next couple of months two of our exhibits have escaped! Our RNZAF pilot and German POW have been loaned to Oundle CE Primary School where the Year Six students are currently studying WWII.

12/09/2026

❌THE MUSEUM IS CURRENTLY CLOSED❌
Please note the Museum is closed while we work on some new developments. We hope to reopen in either December or January for our normal second Sunday open days.
Details of our reopening will be posted on this page.
Our other projects such as the research and Heritage Trail are all continuing.

08/09/2026

We would like to send huge thanks to Neil Burrows for his generous donation of two kits to the museum. The iconic Mustang and Lightning, both of which flew from King’s Cliffe with the 20th Fighter Group. These will be built by our team of fantastic modellers and go on display in the museum.