Shortstown was built on '''Tinker's Hill
, Harrowden. Before it was built, a windmill stood on the site from 13th to 16th century. From 17th to 18th century, the area was known as Windmill Hill'''. Shortstown started with the establishment of the Airship Works in 1917 when housing for the workforce was built next to the airfield. In 1918 and 1927, sheds (later Grade II* listed buildings) were built for the R100 and R101 airships which then represented the latest passenger flight technology. The village was originally built by the
Short Brothers for its workers, but evolved into a settlement for people working at the
RAF Cardington base. File:Shortstown Map 1915.png|A map from 1915 of an area where Shortstown now stands. File:Shortstown Map 1946.PNG|A map from 1946 of an area where Shortstown now stands. Shortstown was only created from 1916 onwards. The land originally lay in the township of
Eastcotts which was itself a part of the ancient parish of
Cardington. Eastcotts became a separate civil parish in 1866. The site selected for the Short Brothers airship works was broad, level and unobstructed. It had good road and rail links with London and was beyond the range of World War I German bombers based in Belgium. In October 1916, the site was acquired by the Admiralty from the Whitbread Estate for £110,000. Short Brothers planned to build housing for 600 employees in a new settlement near to the works. By June 1919, one hundred and fifty one homes in a "simplified
neo-Georgian style", mostly of red brick with dark red tile roofs had been constructed. Architects were
Robert Burns Dick and James Cackett of Newcastle upon Tyne. The houses were arranged in groups of terraces and a
social club was built. File:Cardington Sheds.jpg|Cardington airship sheds, former
Short Brothers works housing
R100 and
R101 airships. Shed no.1 (left) now holds the new aircraft
Airlander 10. Shed no.2 (right) is used for creating films that require a large open-space area File:The Shorts Building, Cardington airfield - geograph.org.uk - 724860.jpg|The Shorts Building before it was refurbished in 2011 File:Shorts Building.jpg|The Shorts Building fully refurbished File:BehindShortsBuilding.jpg|The back of the refurbished Shorts Building The building was refurbished in 2011, and a new site called New Cardington was also built. It is now used for 20 residential apartments and has a Public Common Hall, that shows a permanent display of 17 enhanced historic R101 photographs taken from
The Airship Heritage Trust collection. There are also additional community rooms and
Eastcotts Children's Centre is based here too.
RAF Cardington The Royal Airship Works was put on a care and maintenance basis until 1938, when it was renamed the Balloon Development Establishment. However, the social club at Shortstown was still known as the Royal Airship Works and Shortstown Club in the 1980s. In the meantime, in 1936, an RAF station had opened at Cardington, being particularly concerned with producing gas for barrage balloons and training barrage balloon crews as well as more general training of recruits and NCOs. Throughout the 1940s, Cardington remained a busy RAF station, and from 1953, it became the RAF's main recruitment centre. After the Second World War, further houses were built at Shortstown as married quarters for RAF personnel. The three avenues off the southern extension of Greycote are named after three prominent victims of the R101 disaster:
Brigadier-General Lord Thomson,
Secretary of State for Air;
Air Vice Marshal Sir W. Sefton Brancker, Director of
Civil Aviation at the
Air Ministry and Major
George Herbert Scott,
Assistant Director of
Airship Development (Flying and Training) at the Royal Airship Works. The roads of the western half of the site are all named after Second World War bomber aircraft. With the ending of
National service and cuts in the armed forces the RAF's presence at Cardington began to dwindle and largely disappeared in the 1970s. As a result, the population of Eastcotts declined from 3,675 in 1951 to 1,710 in 1981. == Shortstown today ==