Inside Boulmer, the Northumberland village next to RAF base

The village next to the RAF

Tucked between Alnmouth and Craster, Boulmer (pronounced “Boomer”) is little more than a row of cottages and a pub facing directly onto the North Sea.

Just inland, RAF Boulmer provides round-the-clock surveillance of UK airspace, making this quiet seaside community an unlikely neighbour to a major air command and control hub.

A smuggling capital turned fishing village

For centuries Boulmer’s reputation was anything but sleepy – in the 18th and 19th centuries it was notorious as the “smuggling capital of Northumberland”, with contraband spirits, salt, and tobacco traded through the Fishing Boat Inn.

Much of that illicit traffic was linked to figures like William Faa, the so-called King of the Gypsies, who travelled down from Kirk Yetholm on the Scottish border to do business here.

Despite that colourful past, the village has changed very little in more than a hundred years and is now regarded as one of the last true traditional fishing communities on the Northumberland coast.

With no harbour, blue-painted fishing boats are still hauled up onto the beach, bringing in seasonal catches of crab, lobster, and sea salmon.

How RAF Boulmer arrived on the doorstep

The RAF story at Boulmer began during the Second World War, when land near the village was requisitioned as a decoy airfield designed to draw German attacks away from nearby bases such as RAF Acklington.

Complete with grass runways, dummy aircraft, and ammunition stores, the site was hit in Luftwaffe raids in 1940 and 1941 before being upgraded to a full operational airfield in March 1943, housing Spitfire training flights from No. 57 Operational Training Unit.

The wartime airfield closed in 1945 and reverted to being agricultural land, but the RAF returned in the early 1950s, building a protected underground radar and control centre to monitor the growing Cold War air threat.

By the mid-1950s Boulmer had been designated one of just nine master radar stations, and over subsequent decades its radars fed data into Britain’s air defence network.

A modern air command and control hub

Today RAF Boulmer is part of the RAF’s Air Command and Control Force.

Its mission is to “generate and sustain an operationally agile air command and control capability”, providing continuous surveillance of UK airspace and tactical control of combat and support aircraft from a base that employs around 1,000 service personnel and civilians.

For decades its distinctive “golf ball” radar dome has been a familiar landmark.

The station has survived several defence reviews and a proposed closure in the 2000s.

A village shaped by the base – but still itself

Despite sharing its name with one of the RAF’s most important radar stations, Boulmer itself remains strikingly low-key: a single street of stone cottages, its pub, and a sweep of sand and rock that attracts walkers, birdwatchers, and anglers more than tourists.

Occasional TV crews have passed through – the ITV comedy-drama Distant Shores used the village as a key filming location in 2004.