Ripon Barracks: 'We're desperate to protect the Yorkshire military training site that played a vital role in the Second World War'
Ripon has had a long-standing connection with the military, playing a particularly vital role in the Second World War. Laura Reid explores its past and meets some of those desperate to protect it.
Four years after the end of the Second World War, the Royal Engineers were granted the Freedom of the City of Ripon. The honour was bestowed upon them in recognition of their wartime efforts, with soldiers training in the area for many of the major battles and operations of the conflict. Now, with plans for housing to be developed at the Ripon Barracks site where they were based, a community heritage group is working to research and preserve the city’s military history.
Planning permission was granted last year by North Yorkshire Council for 1,300 homes, a primary school, shops, employment space and a country park at Ripon Barracks, with demolition works anticipated to begin in 2027. Homes England has already acquired some of the site from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to pave way for the development, which will be delivered in phases starting with the Deverell Barracks part of the site before moving on to Claro Barracks, Laver Banks, and the former Engineering Park. The project will see the Royal Engineers there relocated to barracks in Catterick, ending Ripon’s long association with the Armed Forces.
Volunteers at Ripon Military Heritage Trust (RMHT) say the site is one of “very considerable national and international importance”. The group does not want to stop the housing development, insists secretary Jane Furse, an architectural historian, but “once the military has left Ripon, we want to make sure that legacy is there for future generations”.
Members of the trust want to see a number of huts from the site ‘saved’ from demolition and preserved in the city, forming part of a military heritage and education centre where Ripon’s long-standing military connection can be shared. “You’ve got 100 years of British military history on that site which you could interpret,” says chairman Guy Wilson, a military historian. “It’s a hidden story. You tell people even in Ripon about the real significance of this in the Second World War and they say ‘wow, I didn’t know that’. That story has been sort of forgotten and it shouldn’t be forgotten.”
Guy has a fascinating background as former Master of the Armouries and head of the country’s national museum for arms and armour. During his leadership, the Royal Armouries expanded from its original site at the Tower of London, including with the opening of the museum which still stands today in Leeds.
These days based near Easingwold, 76-year-old Guy got involved in RMHT through Jane, who recently moved from Ripon to nearby Northallerton and was supporting Ripon Civic Society with consultation work around neighbourhood planning, when she first heard about development plans for the barracks and began researching the military history of the site.
“The more we have gone into the history, the more incredible the story has been and the more determined we have become that we need to preserve this legacy,” says the 58-year-old, who spent her career in the field of planning and heritage, including inspecting buildings for what is now Historic England. “This is such a good opportunity to combine the rare and unique physical remains of military heritage with the chance to educate,” she continues, “to tell the history of the site and provide a legacy for the military in Ripon, which is something the city feels fiercely protective and proud of.”
At the start of the First World War, Ripon became home to one of the ‘New Army’ camps, housing what was initially a volunteer portion of the British Army formed following the outbreak of hostilities. As well as becoming home to numerous battalions, it also provided convalescent care with an on-site military hospital and, at the end of the conflict, was used for repatriated prisoners of war. One of its most famous residents was poet Wilfred Owen, who spent a number of months in Ripon recovering from shell shock and during his time there, wrote and re-wrote some of his work capturing the realities of war.
After the conflict, the land on which the camp had stood was returned to agricultural use, but when preparations later began in 1939 for a possible war against Nazi Germany, Ripon again found itself home to the military, with a militia camp of wooden huts created for the training of recruits. Jane and Guy explain how the following year, that camp, on what is now the Ripon Barracks site, would go on to form the basis of accommodation for the Royal Engineers School of Military Engineering, which played a key role in training soldiers for the conflict and in the development and testing of apparatus and equipment.
RMHT research has established that bomb disposal training, experimental tunnelling and training in mine warfare all took place there, as did the development and testing of new Bailey bridges and the training of troops in their use. The portable bridges required no special tools or heavy equipment to assemble, yet were strong enough to carry tanks, which made them an effective way to provide temporary crossings so troops could proceed over various terrains.
Guy says: “Engineers were incredibly important in the Second World War. Everyone who was trained for bomb disposal in this country will have been trained by someone who had been trained (in Ripon) for example. How many lives were saved by the skill and so forth that went into this?
“They were looking at mining and anti-tank warfare. The (Bailey) bridging work done here – training people to put them up and down and doing the testing, an awful lot went into that.”
“Do you know of anywhere in the North of England, a single site, which had more impact on the course of the Second World War than this spot?,” he continues.
“No, because it doesn’t exist. This was fundamental to a lot of what happened in the Second World War, how those allied armies moved so quickly.” And it wasn’t just a centre for the British forces either, explains Jane, noting how an American school of engineering was also created on site for the training of US troops in the UK. “It really became the centre for allied engineering training.”
The trust, which is also running an oral history project to capture memories of Ripon’s association with the Armed Forces over the years, wants to see a handful of the many military huts that remain on the site preserved because of their “heritage value”. But without the trust (or the community of Ripon) owning, or being given any of the huts, nor any land on which to site them, members say they cannot look to raise funds for their conservation and the transformation into a heritage and education centre.
“We’ve got the physical tangible heritage in the buildings and this amazing context of what was going on with training during the Second World War,” Jane says. “It’s such an incredibly important site and a one-off opportunity, not just for Ripon but for Yorkshire.”
Homes England told The Yorkshire Post that it was preparing a heritage strategy “that will ensure the site’s military history is reflected in the future development through its layout, architecture, landscaping, public realm, interpretation, public art and community initiatives”. It said a 3D virtual model and comprehensive historic record of the site were also being produced.
The organisation said it had assessed whether retaining military huts and structures was “feasible and deliverable” and that assessments had found “significant asbestos, hazardous wood preservatives and other condition issues, which present substantial challenges to retaining or reusing many of the buildings” but said it continued “to explore opportunities to provide suitable materials, structures and artefacts to RMHT”.