Geograph - photograph every grid square

While the greatest acreage at Stansted at the time was taken up by 120 or so scrap Prentice trainers, there were also a dozen or more four-engined aircraft in various states of dereliction. For me as a schoolboy, much the most interesting were the Avro Tudors - an extinct species, you might say, as no aircraft of that type would ever fly again.

But there were also a few Avro Yorks - used as a troop-transporters in the era of conscription, but soon to be surplus to requirements. The Hermes was a more modern aircraft altogether, and I was surprised to find a number of them being broken up. But they had been displaced from airline duties by later Lockheed, Douglas, and Boeing types - and like the Yorks, ended up as troop-transporters.

Looking at the expanse of Essex in the background of this photo, you can see that in 1960 much of Stansted aerodrome was undisturbed countryside. If there were any scheduled passenger flights at all, they were very few. But the place was home to a number of aero-engineering businesses, and was used as a base by the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation.