Rescue of old airfield buildings

A couple of comments from me for what they are worth:
1) Jason - are you sure the Thorpe Abbotts tower is officially Listed? I am not fully up to date on which buildings are Listed in England but don't recall it being Listed in the mid-nineties. NB The best way to check is to ask the local authority's planning dept and they may even have a copy of the Listing Schedule if you are lucky.

2) I can think of several more examples of historic aviation buildings being preserved in the UK by dismantling and relocation in recent years/decades - the 1911 world's first flight ticket office at Brooklands Museum (moved from the opposite side of the aerodrome in 1988/89 when it was at some risk of demolition); the ex Ipswich Airport Boulton & Paul hangar recently rebuilt at the Norfolk & Suffolk Air Museum; a Robin hangar at Woodley (for the Museum of Berks Aviation); the huge & impressive framework of the 1912 airship shed at Farnboro' (the missing top half removed in WW1 and re-used by the RAE nearby was reunited with the bottom half by Slough Estates in (I think) late 2006. It can be done where there is the will and the money!

Must admit it would be good to see a control tower relocated somewhere as a last resort ie if demolition on its original site was inevitable. This may have been done in the USA but not yet in the UK as far as I know.

Here is a photo (taken a few years ago) of another of Brooklands' surviving historic aviation buildings relocated in 1988/89 to the new Brooklands Museum on the opposite side of the aerodrome from its original location. Even this relatively simple structure (brick with timber windows, door and roof frame, clay tiled roof but no floor slab) was not easy to move at the time. It was already Listed and Scheduled but due to major redevelopment of most of the surrounding land its future there was very uncertain so the then equivalent of English Heritage agreed to its careful dismantling and rebuilding by approved contractors. This Summer, to mark 100 years of aviation at Brooklands, it has been refurbished externally and is now just about done apart from replacing a few cracked roof tiles.

Scapa, i was told by one of the guys who run the museum that the Tower was listed, according to him it was the only one that had been.