Eastcotts is an electoral ward within the

Borough of Bedford The Borough of Bedford is a unitary authority area with borough status in the ceremonial county of Bedfordshire, England. Its council is based in Bedford, its namesake and principal settlement, which is the county town of Bedfordshire. The borou ...

. It was formerly also a

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

until its abolition on 1 April 2019, when

Cotton End Cotton End is a small village and civil parish on the outskirts of Bedford. It became its own parish as of 1 April 2019, having previously been part of the parish of Eastcotts. Ordnance Survey maps from the 1880s show its name as 'Cardington Cot ...

and

Shortstown Shortstown is a village and civil parish on the outskirts of Bedford, on a ridge above the River Great Ouse, originally called Tinkers Hill. This ridge also overlooks the two other parts of Eastcotts – Harrowden to the north and Cotton End ...

parishes were established. The boundaries of Eastcotts are approximately Exeter Wood to the east,

Bedfordshire Greensand Ridge Bedfordshire Greensand Ridge is an escarpment which runs through Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire Bedfordshire (; abbreviated Beds) is a ceremonial county in the East of England. The county has been administered by three unitary authorities, ...

to the south and Shocott Spring to the west. There are two woodlands; Shocott Spring and Exeter Wood, two villages; Shortstown and Cotton End and two hamlets; Harrowden and

Herrings Green Herrings Green is a hamlet in the civil parish of Cotton End, on the outskirts of Bedford, in the Bedford district, in the ceremonial county of Bedfordshire, England. The settlement is close to Cotton End and Wilstead Wilstead is a villag ...

. And some landmarks such as the Cardington Sheds.

History

Looking back across a field of rape towards the airship hangars at Cardington - geograph

Eastcotts Castle a small motte castle constructed of timber was built during the 11th or 12th century. Located on the

, it overlooked the parish to the north. In 1831 Eastcotts was described as a chapelry in the parish of Cardington, in the

hundred 100 or one hundred (Roman numeral: C) is the natural number following 99 and preceding 101. In medieval contexts, it may be described as the short hundred or five score in order to differentiate the English and Germanic use of "hundred" to des ...

Wixamtree Wixamtree is an ancient hundred located in Bedfordshire, England. Wixamtree was one of the hundreds of Bedfordshire, with its council being the primary form of local government in its area from the Anglo-Saxon times to the nineteenth century. ...

, miles south-east of Bedford. In 1915

Short Brothers Short Brothers plc, usually referred to as Shorts or Short, is an aerospace company based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Shorts was founded in 1908 in London, and was the first company in the world to make production aeroplanes. It was particu ...

bought land in the parish to build airships for the

Admiralty Admiralty most often refers to: *Admiralty, Hong Kong *Admiralty (United Kingdom), military department in command of the Royal Navy from 1707 to 1964 *The rank of admiral *Admiralty law Admiralty can also refer to: Buildings * Admiralty, Traf ...

and constructed a 700-foot-long (210 m)

airship hangar Airship hangars (also known as airship sheds) are large specialized buildings that are used for sheltering airships during construction, maintenance and storage. Rigid airships always needed to be based in airship hangars because weathering was a ...

to build the two R31 class airships. They also built a housing estate for workers which they named Shortstown. The site was nationalized in 1919 and became known as the Royal Airship Works. The shed was extended in 1926 and its roof was raised to accommodate the

R101 R101 was one of a pair of British rigid airships completed in 1929 as part of a British government programme to develop civil airships capable of service on long-distance routes within the British Empire. It was designed and built by an Air Mi ...

. A second shed was moved here from

RNAS Pulham RNAS Pulham (later RAF Pulham) was a Royal Navy Air Service (RNAS) airship station, near Pulham St Mary south of Norwich, UK. Though land was purchased by the Admiralty in 1912 the site was not operational until 1915. From 1918 to 1958, the ...

Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...

, in 1928, but after the crash of the R101 in 1930, all work stopped in Britain on airships and the site became a storage station. It became known as

RAF Cardington The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...

in 1936 and started building barrage balloons and became the No 1 RAF Balloon Training Unit. The site has since been used for a variety of other purposes by a number of organizations including the Royal Aircraft Establishment, the Building Research Establishment, the Meteorological Research Unit,

Airship Industries Airship Industries was a British manufacturers of modern non-rigid airships (blimps) active under that name from 1980 to 1990 and controlled for part of that time by Alan Bond. The first company, Aerospace Developments, was founded in 1970, and ...

and

Hybrid Air Vehicles Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV) Limited is a British limited company and a British manufacturer of hybrid airships, though none have been built since the crash of its last demonstrator. These aircraft use both aerodynamics and lighter-than-air (LTA) ...

. The sheds are both

listed buildings In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

, but Hangar Number 1 is at risk, needing complete repair and refurbishment.

Population

As a result of the building of Shortstown, the population of Eastcotts rose from 848 in 1911 to 2,065 by 1921. With the ending of

National Service National service is the system of voluntary government service, usually military service. Conscription is mandatory national service. The term ''national service'' comes from the United Kingdom's National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939. The ...

and cuts in the armed forces the RAF’s presence at Cardington began to dwindle and largely disappeared in the 1970s. As a result, the population of Eastcotts declined from 3,675 in 1951 to 1,710 in 1981. The majority of the population of the parish, which was 4,004 in 2016, lives in Shortstown in the northern part of the parish, which was built-in in the early 20th century to house workers from the Cardington airship works. The population of the ward is expected to rise substantially in the near future, as planning permission for the development of 1,100 homes on the new site built in 2011 named New Cardington. site of the former RAF camp in Shortstown was granted in November 2005.Land at and adjacent to the former RAF site at Shortstown
– statement of circa November 2005 from Bedford Borough Council, with link to full planning brief prepared in January 2003.

Population table

Community facilities

Eastcott's open spaces include Shortstown Playing Field near Southcote, Shocott Spring between Cotton End and Shortstown and Exeter Wood which is south-east of the parish.

Education

A boarding school was established as a result of the

Elementary Education Act 1870 The Elementary Education Act 1870, commonly known as Forster's Education Act, set the framework for schooling of all children between the ages of 5 and 12 in England and Wales. It established local education authorities with defined powers, autho ...

. The school was built in 1874, at a cost of £1,174, for 140 children with a schoolmaster’s house attached. A primary school was built in Shortstown around 1957, which was then demolished in 2012 to create a new primary school, located in New Cardington, that was completed in September 2013. There is currently two schools in Eastcotts
One in Shortstown
an
another in Cotton End

References

External links

Parish boundaries map from Bedford Borough Council
*{{cite web , url=http://eastcottsparishcouncil.bedsparishes.gov.uk// , title=Eastcotts Parish Council , publisher=Bedfordshire Parishes , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200302105751/http://eastcottsparishcouncil.bedsparishes.gov.uk// , accessdate=13 July 2016, archive-date=2 March 2020
Eastcotts Parish Profile Census 2011
Former civil parishes in Bedfordshire Borough of Bedford