I was shaking so much I could barely hold my pint…..

By Jonathan Waters, the Owner/Managing Director of Jonathan Waters Estate Agents, Martlesham and Ipswich.  This is the first of a series of articles about life on Martlesham Heath before the houses were built.

Attending the control tower for the annual open day of the Martlesham Heath Aviation Society and seeing a model of the layout of the former runways on Martlesham Heath reminded me of a time back in the late 70’s and early 80s when you could still get a car onto the runway.

At that time, coming onto the Heath at the Tesco roundabout, Eagle Way finished just passed Manor Road and came to a dead end.  At this point you could drive onto the grass to the right, roughly where Demesne Gardens is now, and by driving along the grass could get onto the then virtually still untouched north/south runway.

This made it a superb location for anyone just starting to learn to drive for the first time.  My elder brother learnt to drive on Martlesham Heath; I learnt to drive there too and then went on to try to teach several girlfriends and friends to drive there – “tried” being the operative word – I would make the world’s worst driving instructor!

On learning to drive myself, my initial efforts were OK.  I had previously learnt to ride a motorbike and passed my motorbike test, so it helped enormously that I already knew the system of letting the clutch out as you applied the accelerator.  Moving off from a standing start and changing up gears as you picked up speed was therefore no problem.  My efforts on a three point turn, however, were hopeless.

I was learning in an old burgundy Austin Allegro which my dad had at the time.  I remember my dad patiently trying to assist me time and time again as we attempted a three point turn on Eagle Way somewhere about where the Squires Lane junction is now, but I just couldn’t do it.

Anyway, fast forward a year or so, and having passed my test, I was now proudly at the wheel of a burgundy Mark I Escort 1100 (VOV 409J) - I think push bikes went faster!).  I decided to try my first attempt at teaching somebody else to drive.

I can’t remember how, but I foolishly somehow got talked into teaching one of the girls from my class at school one Sunday morning.  She had never even sat in the driver’s seat of a stationery car before, so really was a total beginner.

Whilst most people have sat in an aircraft as it sped down the runway to take off, I don’t know how many of you have every actually driven a car down a runway?  I can tell you that they are very wide and very long with acres of space and, on paper, totally safe.  Yet still we managed to have a crash!

Although things had started slowly in the lesson that morning, she had improved over the course of an hour or so and was starting to get a bit more confident – perhaps too confident?  We had got up into third and possibly fourth gear and had hit speeds of 30 miles an hour.  For some reason, the car started kangaroo-ing badly, in fact worse than any car I had ever seen before or since.  She panicked, lost control of the steering, hit the accelerator instead of the brake and shot, at some speed, into a gorse bush at the side of the runway.

I was still shaking over 20 minutes later when, having abandoned the lesson there and then, she offered to buy me a pint of blackcurrant squash at the Maybush.

We met at a school reunion five years ago and some 25 years after the incident.  To this day she reckons she has never seen anyone go so white in all her life.

Undeterred, or perhaps easily persuaded would be more accurate, my cousin asked me to teach him to drive.  He’s two years younger than me and offered me the additional sweetener of offering to pay petrol, which clinched the deal.  Another first ever driving lesson and another gorse bush crash (those bushes must have had magnets in them!) later, afterwards he confessed that he had not put his contact lenses in and suffered from bad eye sight without them.

The biggest challenge, however, came a couple of years later.  By this time I had progressed onto my second Escort Mark I in lime green (TBJ 264M) – could just about keep up with push bikes!).  The car was a DIY do up project with front wings held together by baked bean cans riveted to the existing metal.

It was my next girlfriend (who I went on to marry).  These lessons actually advanced off the runway which by the mid 80s had started to disappear.  We had progressed onto the industrial side of the A12 around the Gloster Road area, where our office is now, and finally onto the A12 itself.

There was only one problem, but it was a major one: she couldn’t tell her left from her right.  We would be driving down the A12 from the Tesco roundabout to the BT roundabout and I would tell her to turn right onto the Martlesham Heath residential side, only to find ourselves driving past the entrance to BT!

Despite the fact that this caused many arguments, she did go on to pass her test first time (as did my other former pupils).  So, things can’t have been all bad.

It’s quite ironic that my daughter, who has recently passed her test, now lives on the very same spot that the runway used to be. For her starting to drive for the first time, there were no facilities around the area like my friends and I were able to enjoy, where you could go somewhere for free, quick and easy access.  How times have changed!

Mark I Escort cornering at full speed on the
Martlesham Heath runway – 1983

Jonathan’s family have owned property on Martlesham Heath since 1984 and still live there.  Jonathan has also owned a property on the Heath and visits the Heath almost every day. He was proud to have been involved in the development of the Martlesham Heath residential area while working in the planning department at Suffolk Coastal District Council.

“I have been fascinated by Martlesham Heath and its history for as long as I can remember,” said Jonathan, owner of Jonathan Waters estate agents Martlesham and Ipswich.  “Having grown up in the area, I have memories of  many an adventure on the Heath before the houses were built.”

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