Burtonwood Peace Camp, 1982

Whilst the Peace Camp is a relatively modern peace of Warrington’s history, we have virtually no mention of it in the town’s museum or archive, and no pictures at all. With this lack of information in mind it seemed a perfect subject for our West Warrington Memories project, which is aimed at filling gaps in the museum’s record of life in our town.

All I can track down at the moment are two newspaper clippings from 1982, one from June and one from October. These clippings state that the camp had been set up in the early part of March 1982 by CND members protesting against the siting of Cruise Missiles in Britain.

CND (the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) had set up a camp of tents, caravans, and other temporary homes at Sycamore Lane North in great Sankey. The articles mention members of two local groups who were involved with the camp, Altrincham CND and Halton Peace Group, but it seems likely that protestors came from far and wide.

Local residents gathered 400 signatures calling for the camp to be removed, whilst camp members gathered 500 signatures calling for it to be left in place.

The two pictures (from the Warrington Guardian) shown in this blog entry are later CND events at the Airbase, but don’t relate to the peace camp itself. Had the camp only be there during 1982, or was it still around by the time of these events?

Do you have any memories of the camp, or even photographs of what it looked like? Were you one of the protestors campaigning for world peace, or one of the residents suddenly faced with a camp on their doorstep? Either way we would love to hear from you, as at the moment we know next to nothing about the camp and its place in Warrington’s history.

This article was originally posted on Friday, March 17th, 2017. The museum and archives received a number of  photographs of Burtonwood Peace Camp following the publication of this article but we’re always keen to record more of the history of the camp so if you have any more content please get in touch.