Two Walks around RNAS Twatt ( also known as HMS Tern )       
Friday February 19th 2010     Afternoon    Cold, clear late afternoon
and
Saturday March 13th 2010 Morning and afternoon   Cold and windy all day
On this visit I was accompanied by archaeologists Antonia Thomas and Daniel Lee from ORCA, film maker Glenda Rome, composer Bill Thompson, dancers Lyndsay Allan and Cheryl Gill.  

Function: Former Royal Navy Air Station now used as farmland.
Location: Grid Reference: HY22SE 58  HY265522 83

The site spreads over a large area, most of which is now turned over to farm land.  It contains older archaeology in the vicinity including an Iron Age Broch the Knowe of Skogar,  early 19th century croft and farm buildings , a Crannog in the loch of Isbister used as an enclosure for growing kale at one time; concrete buildings hurriedly constructed in World War II. The collection of buildings includes - the Control Tower ( a protected control building PCB) with  a mass communications block below; Cinema, Engine Room, Bomb Store; Bunkers , Pill Boxes as well as various earthworks associated with the air station. Recent farming has changed the division of the land into fields.
Temporalities are overlaid
Space is written over.

Impressions                                  
A place of flight paths and fly pasts: an avian architecture. Even the name ‘HMS Tern’ speaks of birds.
 Where aeroplanes once roosted now birds nest and cats hunt.
It was a former base for Squadron’s 700 and 771:
For Defiant; Henley; Walrus I & II; Skua I; Roc; Sea Hurricane I; Boston Havoc; Gladiator; Sea Otter; Martinet
A crash site : Remains of bird bones and feathers.
In the past :  5/1/43 Defiant DR885 771 Squadron Undercarriage collapsed on landing
11/03/43 Henley L3309 Twatt 771 Squadron: In bad visibility two aircraft made an identical approach to Twatt: at 300 feet the propeller of the higher craft, a Roc, cut off the tail of the lower, a Henley, piloted by S/Lt.(A) Ted Gilberd, RNZNVR: both aircraft crashed.
11/5/44 Hurricane Ilb PG483 Crashed on landing
12/5/44 Blenheim IV Z6285 Went off runway and onto it’s nose in the mud
14/7/44 Martinett Engine failure on take off
22/10/44 Bristol Blenheim IV V6 251 Tyre burst on landing
??/02/45 – Sikorsky R-4 771 Squadron Slewed round on take- off and tail rotor struck a parked Blenheim: both aircraft badly damaged: Helicopter a write off.  First helicopter crash in Britain.
?/04/45 Reliant I FB542 Crashed at Twatt
19/4/45 Martinet TTI MS632  Undercarriage collapsed on landing
We found abandoned nests and an egg , cold but unbroken; .abandoned buildings. 
A place of many different species of spaces and points of view.
The control tower overlooks the land on all sides. A place for looking out, scanning the horizon, locating.  Isbister Loch in front; the road to Stromness behind. The east –west runway.The control room offers images of clarity of vision, immensity of space, rational thought.  A bird’s hide view – a place for aviators. The eyes of the station.
Below in the communication block, is a labyrinth of passage ways and contained spaces. Listening spaces of telephones and radio. The ears of the station.
Subterranean bunkers.  Dark, damp contained spaces.  Secret spaces, buried spaces, intimate, confined, unsettling.. Spaces to look into – to be hidden in.  A burrow. A rabbit’s eye view.

Close up details:  text and textures – the writing on the wall.
Text  C14 from Medieval Latin textus version, from Latin textus texture, from texere to compose.
Bricks with the words and places Edinburgh and Niddrie -stamped into them .
Texture C15  textura web, from texere to weave
Rusted metal and lichen in sulphur yellow spiral forms. 
Pierced, punctured ceilings and floors.  Posts wrapped in wire.
A place of changing levels:   Steps, ladders leading up and down offering escapes out of and into.
Places of movement and transition.
Inside /outside spaces connected through decay.
Missing treads, steps, gaps, blind windows.
Spaces defined by absence. Where the wind moves through.

Background of Air Station:
Commissioned on April 1st 1941
March 30th 1944 it was decided to develop Twatt as the only suitable airfield on Orkney for disembarking squadrons of Home Fleet aircraft. Huge extension plans developed. These were abandoned in December 1944 when the war shifted to the Far East
It became a reserve station under Lossiemouth until 1949.
It was sold off in 1957.
In 1970’s Britain and Iceland were involved in the Cod Wars and it was feared NATO would be requested to pull out of Iceland. Military Surveyors considered Twatt and Skeabrae combined as an alternative base. The disputes were solved and the plans shelved.
In mid 1980’s the British Helicopter Advisory Board recommended that Twatt be considered as a helicopter base to serve the potential development of oil fields to the West of Orkney . The price of oil dropped and so was the plan.
The control tower was rescued from demolition in 1986 by Birsay Community Council. The building had already been drilled and the demolition charges planted. Orkney Island Council decided to preserve the tower to form the basis of a small museum.