![]() The engine is in fact no bigger than that on a modern petrol driven lawnmower. Prestwich, a Tottenham based engineer, to fit the aircraft with a suitable JAP engine to power his aircraft. Not exactly a smooth take off.Ī GLC plaque now marks the spot in the Lea Valley Park around five minutes' walk from the Ice Rink on Lea Bridge Road.įor the next year he experimented with different wing designs and his original invention metamorphosed into the aircraft shape we are now familiar with. The land had long been protected as grazing territory and it's reputed to have been covered with the stumps of trees to tether cattle and sheep. He found a premise under the railway arches close to the River Lea in Walthamstow. With his meagre income, he sought out a suitable alternative site to continue his flight adventure. Such was the scepticism with which he was met by the burgeoning motoring gentry he was booted off their Brooklands race track for failure to pay rent in 1908. His first plane, assembled and tested at the Brooklands motor club in Surrey, made a few hops but was never officially recognised as a serious flyer. Roe won the sum of £75 and was hooked on turning the concept into something that could be flown with an engine by an aviator. Lord Northcliffe of the Daily Mail was keen to promote the craze which had been sparked off by the Wright brothers, Wilbur and Orville, in America with their first 1903 flight at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina.Ī massive competition offering cash prizes was held in 1907 at the Alexandra Palace in Wood Green for the best flying model. FLYER DESIGNER BBC SERIES" Now reinvented as the next Summer Olympic venue in 2012 the long stretch of the Lea Valley, from Luton down to Limehouse, is long forgotten as the location of a series of industrial firsts." A news editor from The Times even told him the task was impossible and he was wasting his time. When Alliot Verdon Roe claimed he would get airborne in the early 1900s all-comers humoured him others ridiculed his "crackpot" idea. It was coaxed into the air by British engineer and model plane maker Alliot Verdon Roe. 09:11 GMT, Tuesday, 14 July 2009 10:11 UKĪ hundred years ago the first all-British aircraft was assembled on Walthamstow Marshes. ![]()
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