A charity has received financial support from Cooke Scotland to help secure the future preservation and promotion of a unique Orkney military heritage site.
The donation of £1,000 was made to Birsay Heritage Trust towards a project which will transform access to, and engagement with HMS Tern – a rare World War II naval airbase in Birsay.
Cooke is an intrinsic element of the coastal and rural communities in which its staff live and work by farming the finest Scottish salmon on over 20 seawater aquaculture sites in Orkney. And its Community Benefit Fund will help with the Trust’s ambition of transforming the site into a visitor attraction whilst also creating jobs and encourage economic development in the area.
Funding will support a community engagement co-curation event with the project architects as part of the design brief, offering the opportunity for community input and co-development throughout.
Joel Richardson, Vice President of Public Relations at Cooke, was joined by colleagues from Canada, Australia and Scotland who visited the naval airbase.
“Building stronger communities is a top priority for Cooke and we are proud to support local projects which reflect our corporate values as well as those of our teams,” said Mr Richardson.
“It was interesting to see firsthand how restoring the former wartime airfield will benefit the Orkney economy, bringing new jobs and more tourism visitors to the picturesque island. As a family company, it was a pleasure to hand over the donation to Birsay Heritage Trust on behalf of Cooke – as we draw closer to Remembrance Day, we must always honour armed forces members who have served and died in the line of duty to protect our freedoms.”
William Shearer, of the Birsay Heritage Trust, said: “Of the four World War II airfields in Orkney, HMS Tern has the greatest amount of surviving infrastructure and future plans would provide a living memorial to the men and women who served at HMS Tern.
“The Trust is grateful to Cooke Scotland for the donation which has now allowed us to engage with an architect company from Edinburgh who have just started the overall design brief. This will carry us through various design stages and eventually through to submitting the planning application.”
Commissioned in April 1941, HMS Tern was mainly used as a training airfield and designed to provide accommodation for disembarked front-line squadrons and ship flight aircraft. It remains an important part of Orkney’s military heritage which remained in service until 1957.
Photograph – (from left to right) Gemma Williams, Tassal; Joel Richardson, Cooke Inc; Lindsay Bailey, HMS Tern (guide); Claire Ryan, Cooke Inc, Michael Szemerda, Cooke Inc; and Murray Spooner, Cooke Scotland.