Summary (by AI): I was staggered by the immense scale of Cardington Studios' historic airship hangars and felt a sense of awe seeing such impressive structures in person.
Blog: Cardington Studios was at the very top of my list from the moment I stumbled across it. To be honest, I don’t think I’d even heard of the place before I started my research, but the second I saw it online, I knew I had to go. And I have to say, it really didn’t disappoint.
The site consists of two side-by-side aircraft hangars, originally designed specifically to house airships. As you can imagine, they are absolutely enormous. Before I arrived, I did wonder if they would actually feel that massive in person, or if it was just a case of clever photography making them look more impressive than they were.
I was pleasantly surprised. As I rounded a bend in the road, there they were in the distance. Even from a way off, you get an immediate sense of the scale; they are just staggering.
There is a brand-new housing estate built all the way around the site now, which is a bit of a surreal sight. It must be quite an experience living there with these massive structures towering over your backyard. But the new roads actually worked in my favor, because they allowed me to get much closer to the hangars than I expected.
These sheds were built between the late 1800s and early 1900s to house the giant balloons and airships of the era. Each hangar is roughly 247 meters (812 feet) long and 83 meters (275 feet) wide, with the tallest ceiling reaching a dizzying 55 meters high. To put that in perspective, the internal volume of a single hangar is approximately 760,000 cubic meters—enough space to fit 16 Olympic-sized swimming pools or thousands of double-decker buses.
Over the years, the hangars have lived many different lives. Currently, they’re used as world-class film studios, and the list of productions that have passed through is seriously impressive. We’re talking about Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy (Gotham City was partially built inside), Inception, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Even more recently, they served as a major set for the Squid Game: The Challenge reality series. They’ve also become a go-to spot for major music rehearsals; U2, Lady Gaga, Take That, and Muse are among the artists who have used the cavernous space to prep their massive stadium tours.
Interestingly, they’ve also been used by the Bedfordshire Model Aircraft Company. I can only imagine that the club exists largely because they have this incredible local asset available to them. I’m not sure many other counties in the country have a place where you can fly model aircraft indoors with such "gleeful abandon."
I managed to get right up close and snap a few photos. I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting a security guard to come out and have a word with me, but it turned out to be a quiet visit. It was such an impressive thing to see in person—maybe one day I’ll find a way to see what it looks like on the inside.
The Map: