Stratford sub Castle Village Website
Salisbury, Wiltshire UK
WW2 Secret Spitfire manufacturing
The Secret Spitfires story reveals that a tenth of all Spitfires that were built in secret were built in and around Salisbury. Spares and supplies were stored at various sites one of which was a barn at Parsonage Farm (now Parsonage Close) in Stratford sub Castle.
More than 2,000 Spitfires were built in requisitioned garages and sheds in Salisbury after Southampton's Spitfire production facilities were bombed. Unqualified girls, boys, women, elderly men and a handful of engineers worked on the top-secret operation.
This article supplies the answer to Question No. 30 in the website's
Local History Photo Quiz.
On 9 July 2021, a band played and people gathered to watch a flypast by a WW2 Spitfire (image left) which circled Old Sarum and Hudson's Field several times around 6.30 pm. This flight was to mark the unveiling earlier that day of a fibreglass life-sized replica of a Spitfire that is now on permanent display next to the A345 Castle Road Salisbury, near to the Salisbury Rugby Club which was the location of Spitfire Factory Number 1 during the War.
At the base of the replica there's a Memorial Board recounting the story of the 'Secret Spitfires' that were manufactured here and at several other sites around Salisbury during WW2.
Sources and more information
https://www.secretspitfires.com/
https://www.raf.mod.uk/news/articles/commemorative-secret-spitfire-in-salisbury/
There are several plaques in Salisbury marking the locations of Secret Spitfire factories, this one is in Castle Street.
On 29 June 2019, as part of the Armed Forces Day commemorations, two of the few remaining airworthy Spitfires, Mk Vb AB910 (built 1941), and Mk LF IXe MK356 (built 1944), flew over Stratford sub Castle. More details on this webpage.