Yorkshire Air Museum: History of Yorkshire aviary museum ahead of its 40th birthday celebration
The Yorkshire Air Museum will turn 40 years old this year with a celebratory event that will display vintage cars and aircraft - here is its history.
The Yorkshire Air Museum will host a day of celebration to mark 40 years, with a flying display of three classic aircraft, including one that flew over the museum on its first day open to the public in 1985.
The event will take place on Monday, August 11, 2025, and the highlight of the celebration will be a flying display by three vintage aircraft: a Blackburn B2 biplane, a Miles Messenger and a Bucker Jungmann. Each aircraft will be put on a display of around seven minutes.
There will also be vintage cars from the 1980s and a new exhibition telling the story of the museum.
Anyone who was born in 1985 will be allowed in at the 1985 ticket price of £1.
The museum was formerly named The Yorkshire Air Museum and Allied Air Forces Memorial and was set up as a charity in August 1985.
However, its history dates back a further 40 years prior to the 1980s during the Second World War.
Marketing and communications manager of the museum, Jerry Ibbotson, said: “If you go back 80 years, this was an RAF Elvington bomber base in the Second World War, it was home to squadrons of Halifax Bombers.
“It was only in operation for a couple of years; the 77 squadron, who moved in from Driffield, were here for a year and moved out to Full Sutton.
“There were so many airbases around here. Two squadrons made up entirely of French personnel came in for the last year of the war; they were 346 and 347 squadrons.
“At the end of the war, the base effectively closed, the runway was separated off and was extended by Americans but it was never used for anything.
“The site fell into disrepair; it was a huge site, it went all the way down into Elvington village, the buildings fell down or were demolished but here on his [part] of the site, it was overgrown.”
The museum was run by volunteers initially and many of them were veterans.
“In the early 80s a group of local people, headed particularly by a woman called Rachel Semlyen who is the chair of trustees at the moment, realised what they were standing on and they wanted to create a memorial to the crews who had been here,” Mr Ibbotson said.
“The best way to do that was to clear the site and turn it into a museum. They began clearing the site, there were a lot of volunteers who [worked on it].
“A number of them were veterans of the RAF from the Second World War, some who had actually flown from here.
“In 1985, it was officially a charitable trust. On August 11 of that year, there was a first open day.
“There was a flypast from a Blackburn B2, a Yorkshire company, flown overhead piloted by one of the trustees, Robert Sage, who had flown in the Second World War in a Halifax Bomber.”
The biggest project was to restore the only Halifax Bomber aircraft left in Europe, which took 12 years to complete.
“It grew and grew, went through various stages of development and there was a huge project that was started almost immediately to recreate and restore a Halifax Bomber,” Mr Ibbotson said.
“There wasn’t a single one left in Europe, there was one in Canada. At the same time as they were opening the site, they began scouring the country for bits of Halifaxes.
“[A part] of one that had crashed on the Isle of Lewis in Hebrides was being used as a hen coop. The farmer let us have it; it was airlifted off by a helicopter to the mainland and driven here.
“They managed to source a lot of World War Two huts and buildings from other sites, move them here and re-assemble them on site. That’s really where it came from and it’s now 40 years on.
“It has gone from an organisation that was entirely run by volunteers to one that has been managed by a professional team, but still supported by volunteers.”
Mr Ibbotson shared their future plans for the museum, which has seen 70,000 people visit a year.
“We’re trying to both look at where we started and also at the same time reflect how far we’ve come in those 40 years and where we might go in the future,” he said.
“It’s not just about honouring the past, it’s about securing the museum’s future as well.
“In 2025, the world is a very different place, the world of museums is a very different place. It’s a chance to look at how far we’ve come and where we’re headed in the future.
“We want the museum to continue to grow, develop and to become one of the most successful museums in the country - that’s our ambition.
“We want to have the funds necessary to build another big hangar so that we can bring more of our aircraft and collection indoors. We want a bigger dedicated restoration area.”