NGTE Pystock

Pyestock to the west of Farnborough, was the site of the world leading National Gas Turbine Establishment until 2000.

The germ of the gas turbine engine was set out in a paper by A A Griffith in 1926 (a gifted British scientist, who also made major contributions in materials science by treating cracks in terms of surface energy budgets). Independently, Frank Whittle was developing his ideas while in the RAF and later at the RAE. Shortage of funds (and frankly, vision) by the Government of the time meant that these were not followed up until it was almost too late to see service in World War II. In 1944 the Government set up a rather unsatisfactory forced collaboration between the two groups at Pyestock but it wasnt until 1946 that the NGTE was properly constituted.

Many great names in marine and aero engines (Pegasus, Olympus, Trent) were refined through research and testing but as computing power increased, much of the combustion and operation of these engines could be reliably modelled mathematically, without the need for complex, expensive, noisy testing infrastructure and from the mid 1980s, NGTE began an inexorable decline. The site was finally closed by DERA in 2000.

Although some private research was carried out after its formal closure in 2000, until c 2004, plans for re-developing the site were emerging from c 2005 and it has now been covered by the Cody Technology Park.