RAF Wroughton
| RAF Wroughton | |
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| Wroughton, Wiltshire Near Swindon in England |
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 RAF Wroughton
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| Coordinates | 51°30′25″N 1°48′07″W / 51.507°N 1.802°WCoordinates: 51°30′25″N 1°48′07″W / 51.507°N 1.802°W |
| Site information | |
| Owner | Science Museum Group |
| Open to the public |
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| Site history | |
| Built | 1 April 1940 |
| In use | 1979 |
RAF Wroughton was a Royal Air Force airfield near Wroughton, in Wiltshire, England, about 4 miles (6 km) south of Swindon. It opened on 1 April 1940. At some point in time, control of RAF Wroughton was handed over to the Royal Navy, and it became RNAS Wroughton. Ministry of Defence aviation activity ceased in 1972. The airfield now belongs to the Science Museum Group and is home to the Science Museum at Wroughton, which houses the large-object storage and library of the Science Museum.
It is now the home of The Grand Tour motoring series' test track.
The large-object storage of the Science Museum has been at Wroughton since the 1970s.
RAF Hospital Wroughton was part of the station. The RAF General Hospital (as it was known) opened on 14 June 1941 under the command of Gp. Capt. E C Foreman, during the second world war, by October 1943 8 additional wards had been constructed. At the end of March 1944 the bed capacity was 1000. SECO hutting with inter-connecting corridors added a further 350 beds. Wroughton’s busiest period followed the allied landings in Normandy on D-Day. The first casualties arrived on 13 June 1944, landing at nearby RAF Lyneham. In the 6-months following D-Day 4,811 casualties passed through Wroughton. Wroughton continued as a General Hospital treating military patients, and from 1958 took NHS cases as well to relieve backlogs in the Swindon area. Following a visit to the hospital by Princess Alexandra on 4 July 1967, the Queen conferred the prefix "Princess Alexandra’s" on the hospital on 4 October 1967. When the hostages from Beirut were released in August 1991, Wg Cdr Gordon Turnbull a psychiatrist based at Wroughton, with his team, debriefed John McCarthy, Terry Waite and Jackie Mann and provided the counselling necessary to ease them back into freedom. The hospital closed on 31 March 1996 as part of the Conservative Government's defence cuts at the end of the cold war. The hospital was eventually demolished and the site, called Alexandra Park, contains housing and a Conference Centre.
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