The Isle of Sheppey off the north Kent coast, best known for its dockyard, three prisons and various holiday sites, holds a distinguished place in history for a very different reason. On this small island in the early 20th century, aviation in Britain was born.
After the Wright Brother’s first powered flight in a fixed-wing, heavier-than-air machine on 17th December 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, USA, Wilbur and Orville Wright continued refining their design working towards achieving controlled, manoeuvrable aircraft capable of sustained flight. Despite achieving something that would forever alter the course of humanity, at the time the brothers struggled to get commercial interest, with both British and American governments failing to see the potential in these flying machines.1 But a group of fellow pioneers in Britain watched closely as they understood the significance of this breakthrough.
Charles Rolls - of Rolls Royce Motors fame and fortune - together with Frank and daughter Vera Hedges Butler and others, were a group of balloon enthusiasts passionate about aviation, and in 1901 founded the Aero Club of Great Britain - becoming the Royal Aero Club in 1910, to nurture the sport of ballooning and advance interest and the development of aviation.2 Charles Rolls met the Wright brothers whilst selling cars in America and remained in contact with them. With Europe achieving its first flight in a heavier-than-air machine in 1906,3 Charles and friends were frustrated at Britain’s attitude to these flying machines and set about trying to change this.4
In 1908, members from the Aero Club including Charles Rolls, went to France to see a demonstration of the Wright Flyer, and were each given flights by Wilbur.5 On their return they spoke with the Aero Club’s balloon aeronautical engineers, Eustace and Oswald Short, enthusing with great excitement about their experience. The Short brothers saw the opportunity and decided to expand their work and manufacture flying machines.6 The third brother and fellow engineer, Horace Short, had been unimpressed with ballooning and found work elsewhere. But when Eustace and Oswald approached him about working with the Wright brothers, he joined them and became a key player in what was to happen next.7 At the end of 1908, Eustace went to France to meet Wilbur and have a demonstration flight, and negotiations began for the production of the Wright Flyer in the UK. A contract was agreed for the Short Brothers to build the first six Flyers.8 Now, they needed a site.
The Short Brother’s balloon manufacturing business was based in Battersea, London, but for the production of aircraft they needed a flat open space free from obstacles, enabling miles of safe flying. Aero Club member Griffith Brewer was tasked with finding a suitable site, and he suggested Shellness, Leysdown on the Isle of Sheppey. Most ballon ascents were made from London so the members of the Aero Club were familiar with the Thames Estuary region, and Sheppey offered most of what they needed.9 A 400 acre golf course was acquired with the accompanying Muswell Manor (then known as Mussell Manor), which would become the clubhouse for the Aero Club. Member and aviation enthusiast Frank McClean paid for the work to alter the land to accommodate powered flight, creating one of the first airfields in Britain, and the aviation legacy of the Isle of Sheppey began in earnest. The year was 1909.10
In February of that year, Horace Short met with the Wright Brothers in Pau, France. He made quick pencil sketches of the aircraft as there were no blueprints,11 but it was all that this engineering genius needed to take the designs back to the UK, and with his brothers Eustace and Oswald, establish the first aircraft factory in Britain - possibly the first in the world - at Shellness, Leysdown, Isle of Sheppey, Kent, producing Wright Flyers under license from the Wright Brothers in America.12 Production was underway by the end of April 1909, and with the Aero Club based here too, Sheppey began its exciting journey into aviation unknowns and the pioneers were well and truly blazing their trail.13
At the end of April 1909, Aero Club member and aviation enthusiast JTC Moore-Brabazon made history on the Isle of Sheppey by becoming the first observed Briton in Britain to officially pilot a heavier-than-air flying machine, named Bird of Passage.14 His flight, which took place on Shellbeach, another aviation first for the island, demonstrated the potential of powered flight in Britain, and inspired a new generation of early aviation pioneers to push boundaries through experimentation and engineering innovation, setting records and making history.
Days after Moore-Brabazon’s record-setting flight, the Wright Brothers visited the site to approve the production of their aircraft. Charles Rolls chauffeured the Wright’s around the site in his Rolls Royce, and they complimented the airfield, factory, and workmanship.15 The brothers joined members of the Aero Club for a lunch in Muswell Manor, and afterwards posed for a photograph outside the front of the building. It features, Mr TDF Andrews - owner of the manor-, Oswald, Horace and Eustace Short, Frank McClean, Griffith Brewer, Frank Hedges Butler, Dr WJS Lockyer, Howard Wright - although listed at the time as Warwick Wright, JTC Moore-Brabazon, Wilbur and Orville Wright and the Hon CS Rolls.16 This photograph is known as ‘The Founding Fathers’, and is regarded by many as one of the most famous aviation pictures ever taken, capturing the historic birth of British aviation.17
With a production team of 80 and Horace’s brilliant engineering mind, the Shorts soon developed their own design and in October 1909,18 JTC Moore-Brabazon achieved another first by becoming the first person in Britain to fly a circular mile in a British-built machine, a Short No. 2, winning £1000 prize money for the Daily Mail challenge;19 this flight took place at the Shellness airfield at Leysdown. Later that day, Moore-Brabazon flew for four miles over to Eastchurch and back, winning the British Empire Michelin Cup for the longest flight in an English machine.20 In 1910, he was awarded the Aero Club’s Pilot’s certificate No. 1.21
Moore-Brabazon famously went on to fly carrying a small piglet in a wicker basket, a publicity stunt to jokingly prove that pigs could fly;22 an act that would probably be disapproved of today but in 1909, it captured the public imagination and highlighted the pioneering spirit of the time. In his biography, The Brabazon Story, he addresses the ‘misapprehension’ about these early flyers being brave, he says, ‘We were very interested, and we may have been foolish, but we were not brave; for nobody had had any accidents and nobody had been killed. Aviation took place chiefly on the ground, and aviation on the ground is not particularly dangerous.’23 At this point, aviation was about excitement and adventure, and retained an enchanted, almost magical innocence to it.
The Wright Brothers visited Shellness again in August and October 1909, by which point the limitations of the site were becoming apparent and an alternative location had been acquired by Frank McClean at Stonepits Farm, Eastchurch,24 where Charles Rolls had already been teaching himself to fly in a glider. The Wright Brothers were taken to see the new more substantial aerodrome, and in 1910 all production and flying relocated to Eastchurch, catapulting the site into a hub for pioneers, exploration and innovation, and becoming the centre of British civil and military aviation.25 Imagine Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines on the Isle of Sheppey!
Progress and advancement in British aviation was celebrated when Eastchurch was chosen to host the 1911 Gordon Bennett Air Race. Established in 1909 by American millionaire Charles Gordon Bennet, this prestigious event took place on the 1st July on the Isle of Sheppey, with 10,000 spectators gathering to marvel at these aeronautical pioneers racing for the trophy cup and prize Money.26
With the threat of war building on the continent and Germany investing heavily in aviation, Frank McClean offered aeroplanes and training to the Admiralty. Initially rejected but subsequently accepted in 1911, the first military pilots were trained and the first flying school was established at Eastchurch; the Shorts Brothers providing the pilots and ground crew with technical training. The Admiralty purchased four aircraft and launched the first Royal Navy Air Station.27
On 13th April 1912, the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) was formed incorporating a Central Flying School, Military Wing and Naval Wing. Eastchurch was the HQ for the Naval Wing alongside Farnborough for the Army, but with the favour of Winston Churchill, First Sea Lord, and his belief in Eastchurch, the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) was formed rather than the Naval Wing of the RFC.28 Eastchurch and the Isle of Sheppey became the centre for Naval Flying with many more firsts in: air to ground communications, bombing, mounting guns on aircraft and dropping torpedoes from the air.29 It was also instrumental in the development of early seaplanes. In January 1912, RN Ltn. Charles Samson became the first British person to take off from a ship, HMS Africa moored at Sheerness Harbour, in an aircraft - a Shorts - and land on dry land,30 marking the birth of naval aviation.
The aviation pioneers at Eastchurch continued pushing boundaries and on 10th August 1912, Frank McClean, now widely known as one of the founding patrons of aviation, took off from anchorage on the Swale in a Shorts seaplane heading for the Thames. He famously flew through Tower Bridge then under London Bridge, Southwark Bridge, Blackfriars Bridge and Waterloo Bridge, smiling and waving to the cheering crowds of onlookers, before landing safely on the Thames next to the Houses of Parliament.31
1913 saw the Shorts relocate largely to Rochester as the business grew and the increased military presence at Eastchurch became a hinderance. Winston Churchill, now 1st Lord of the Admiralty, was given flying lessons at Eastchurch. Progress took flyers further and for longer, and in 1914 Frank McClean, Alec Ogilvy, Dr Norman Lockyer & Horace Short, flew up the Nile to Khartoum in a specially designed four seater expedition Shorts aircraft. But dark times were ahead and few could have envisaged the extent of what lay ahead for the world, and how these extraordinary times would change the activity at Eastchurch forever.32
The onset of World War I in 1914 saw Eastchurch transition into a critical military site, and the formation of the earliest RNAS squadron to go the Western Front in WW1. Known as the Eastchurch Squadron, it carried out the first strategic bombing raids.33
Eastchurch also took on home defence with the formation of No. 2 (Naval) Squadron, and became a key military research and training centre.34 In December 1914, the flying ground and all its facilities were requisitioned under the Defence of the Realm Act, and the essence of Eastchurch changed forever.35 With the tragic death of some of the early flyers: Charles Rolls and Cecil Grace36 - both killed in 1910 and Horace Short, - who died in 1917,37 and with development and progress accelerating, the pioneering days of aviation on the Isle of Sheppey were coming to a close. The RNAS and the RFC merged on 1st April 1918 forming the RAF, and Eastchurch became one of the first RAF stations.
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RAF Eastchurch with Leysdown as a satellite site, remained operational between the wars and active during WWII, continuing to contribute to Britain’s defence strategy. It was the first base for retreating members of the Polish air force as they regrouped and joined the RAF, and it was home to both Coastal Command and Technical Training Command over the years. Spitfire Squadrons were operational from the base, and it played its part in preparations for D-Day. Eastchurch was badly bombed during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz in 1940, but as peace arrived on 8 May 1945, life at the airfield resumed to a quieter pace.38 In 1947 RAF Eastchurch was closed and the land taken over by the Home Office.
Three prisons now operate on this historic site, which witnessed the birth of British aviation and laid the foundations for modern flight as we know it. The Eastchurch Aviation Memorial was unveiled in 1955, with pioneers such as JTC Moore-Brabazon (now Lord Brabazon) in attendance.39 The memorial, a beautiful stained glass window in All Saints Church, and a plaque at Muswell Manor,40 commemorate all those who lived their lives and lost their lives for the advancement of aviation on the island, for the country, and the world; the debt of gratitude owed to these brave men is considerable.
Eastchurch Aviation Museum was opened in 2015 to preserve and maintain the rich history of aviation on the Isle of Sheppey. It tells the story of the pioneers and the island’s aviation history, the remains of which include Grade II Listed Admiralty 1912 RNAS hangers, the first in the world, acknowledged by Historic England as one of the most significant aviation heritage sites in Europe.
The story of aviation on the Isle of Sheppey, from first flights and the daring experiments of the Short Brothers, to the military advancements of two world wars, is a testament to human ingenuity, perseverance, and courage. The island’s contributions have left an indelible mark on the history of flight, and the legacy of the Isle of Sheppey serves as a reminder of the bold steps taken in our quest to conquer the skies.
Bibliography
Brabazon, Lord. The Brabazon Story. London: William Heinemann, 1956.
Britten, Michael D. Flights of Inspiration. Milton Keynes: Author House, 2009.
Croydon C.B.E. R.A.F. (rted), Bill. Early Birds: A short history of how flight came to Sheppey. Sheerness: Publicity Matters, date of publication not known.
Hughes, David T. Flying Past: A History of Sheppey Aviation. Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2009.
Landau, Helen. The Birth of British Aviation: Prisoners of Hope. Cheltenham: MG Powell, 2013.
References
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