West Malling: more then & then & now.

As many as one people have written to ask where exactly in Kings Hill the MMT hanger stood. This, o' course, was the scene of the climactic Yer Mama Should etc. sequence in the titular film, but despite the excellent illustrations in The Beatles' London, pinning down its former location proved tricky; virtually nothing now remains of West Malling airfield, and, as stated in the aforementioned 'bok':"...the new roads and buildings have obliterated any sense of MMT orientation".
Well almost...but not quite. There is one surviving landmark - the old control tower, and this, together with the above newly found pic, allows a more or less accurate placing of the 'anger (should anyone care.)
There were actually four hangers at West Malling. The pics above and below were taken with the MMT hanger behind the photographer, but crucially (and that really isn't the right word) the control tower can be seen above on the right. This one is to the immediate left of the above (clear as mud, but let's plough on):


An overview - the arrow marks the spot:


This 'then & then' again shows the location - the hanger in these pics isn't the MMT one:


Had the photographer turned around, however, they'd have got the following view - the "correct" hanger (and another 'then & then'):


The MMT hanger location can thus be ascertained. The car park on the right is (more or less) the spot where John and George's vehicles can be seen in the first two pics above, the arrows point to the control tower, the circled portion corresponds to the '67 fan photo, and scanning left shows what now squats where the very hanger once...errr...also squatted, namely Queen Street in Kings Hill:


There are a number of excellent on-line resources celebrating the history of West Malling airfield (and lamenting what has become of it), and lots of interesting pics. For example these, taken on the other side of the hanger seen in the first two pics above, with the one on the left circa WW2:


So now ye know.

West Malling: Kings Hill - Durello Avenue.

What, pray tell, compels all this? It's an odd business, no question, but one of many itches that, I feel, needed scratching revolves around the former West Malling (pronounced "Mawling", apparently) Airfield, scene of much of Magical Mystery Tour, and visited by "your" (why is everything "your" these days?) tired/emotional writer of drivel during the glorious summer of 1985, before the dread redevelopment.
It's been a source of regret, somewhere amongst the middle of the by now enormous pile of regrets, that I didn't take more photos that day (particularly given that the ones I did take were of the wrong thing).
So I felt compelled, m'lud, to return, digital camera in hand, in order to test the assertion in the Beatles' London that the "new roads and buildings have obliterated any sense of MMT orientation".
Using (or mis-using) the wonders of satellite mapping, together with the glorious diagrams in the aforementioned tome, it's still possible to locate the Walrus locales, mainly due to the fact that the developers haven't managed to destroy the surrounding woods yet (Hoath Wood, Coalpit Wood, Not Sure If I Wood, Jesus I Should Be Beaten To A Pulp Immediately For That Which Isn't Even A Wood, and so on, and so forth, etc.).
Thus, Durello Avenue: this is the very spot where the sequence for I Am The Walrus was filmed:


It's now a cul-de-sac, and they were smack in the middle of it (if that makes sense):


The famous blast walls (32 pairs, fact fans), long, long gone, o' course. These were mainly situated on the edges of the airfield, but the one behind the Beatles was directly beyond what is now Durello Avenue, and luck has dictated that the patch of ground thus far remains:


So, to labour the point unnecessarily, here is what's left of the Walrus locations:


Funnily enough, in what seems to be about the right position (re. blast wall), there is the concrete footprint of...something:


Walking on past the houses that can be seen in the above pic, I came upon a patch of undespoiled ground; the perimeter road would have run along to the right. Traces of the old airfield remain here, yet this too is about to be swallowed up by a no doubt horrible business park:


Wandering further I arrived at the edge of the former airfield, a spot now marked by large chunks of something or other:


Clearly these were once part of something else; one would hope an airfield related building, but shurely not the blast walls?
So there we have it. There is still a small patch of MMT in Kings Hill, if one knows where to look. But I wouldn't count on it for very much longer. So it goes.