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.”
