Aside from the Hospital, HQ and T2 hangar sites, the airfield had been fully returned to farmland by the mid 1970's - most of the runways and buildings being broken up for hardcore. Around this time a group, led by well known local resident and glider pilot Freddie Wiseman, purchased part of the airfield which included the NE/SW runway and formed the Ridgewell Oatley Gliding Club. After gaining the necessary permissions in 1976 they operated for a number of years using a Slingsby T-21 - flying had at last returned to Ridgewell. A local model aircraft club began using the site midweek and continues to do so to this day. Following the demise of the Ridgewell Oatley club in the eighties, the site was sold on. After a couple of changes of ownership, it was purchased in 1990 by it's present owners, The Essex Gliding Club. The present Essex Gliding Club was formed back in the early 1960's, flying from Langdon Hills near Basildon. They moved to North Weald airfield near Harlow where they operated with few restrictions until 1975 when an expanding London TMA (Terminal Marshalling Area) limited the airspace above. Over the years a growing Stansted Airport had introduced further restraints on gliding operations which led the club to acquire it's new home. The club also purchased the north hangar hardstanding, it's perimeter track and various derelict buildings, making it the guardian of the largest remaining section of the original airfield. They have also recently reopened part of the survieing East/West runway for aero-towing, bringing another small part of the airfield back into operation.

So, in the summer months at least, flying continues at the airfield, only now in a more peaceful and graceful way than at the start of the airfield's life.

At the hospital site the Ridgewell Airfield Commemorative Association have established a fine display in one of the remaining nissen huts behind the war memorial. During the summer months on every second Sunday the association opens the museum to the public and, weather permitting, holds an outdoor display. Jim Tennet and his team don their Officers and GI uniforms and bring a lot of wartime nostalgia to both visitors and those driving pass (along the A1017) the site.

The land where the airfield once stood has now been devided between several farms so the airfield has returned to a quiet pace of life where tractors and combined harvesters are the only heavies rolling across much of Ridgewell's long lost runways and the perimeter tracks have become part of the commute to work. But, for the men who sacrificed their lives here, this is, perhaps, exactly how it should be.

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