FIRST - All British Powered Flight - Walthamstow Marshes, London, UK
N 51° 34.075 W 000° 03.052
30U E 704382 N 5717104
First all British powered flight from Walthamstow Marsh.
Waymark Code: WMBCH4
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 05/05/2011
Views: 6
The plaque reads:
"A.V.Roe 1877 - 1958
Under these arches Alliott Verdon Roe assembled his Avro No 1 Triplane. In July 1909 he made the first all British powered flight from Walthamstow Marsh."
The man:
(Edwin) Alliott Verdon-Roe (April 26, 1877 – January 4, 1958) was a pioneer British pilot and aircraft manufacturer, and founder in 1910 of A. V. Roe and Co.
He was the first Englishman to make a powered flight (in 1908 at Brooklands) and the first Englishman to fly an all British machine a year later, on Hackney Marshes.
Roe was born in Patricroft, now in Salford. The son of a doctor, educated at Shepperton and St Paul's, he left home when he was 14 to go to Canada where he spent a year working odd jobs, including assisting with getting out the drawings for a flying machine[1].
Once he returned to Britain he served as an apprentice with the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and later went to study marine engineering at King's College London. He was a fitter at Portsmouth dockyard and tried but failed to join the Royal Navy as an engineer. Instead, in 1899, he started work for the British and South African Royal Mail Company as an engineer, where he stayed until 1902. He joined the SS Inchanga as fifth engineer in 1899. It was during this time that he first turned his mind to the possibility of actually building a flying machine.
From 1903 he spent 3 years as a draughtsman in a motor works. Gradually he developed his interest in birds and in flight, and began to construct flying models, winning a Daily Mail competition with a prize of £75 for one of his designs in 1907, against fierce competition. With the prize money he was soon to build a full size aeroplane based on his winning model.
When the Wright brothers made the very first flight in a heavier than air machine at Kittyhawk, U.S.A. he was almost immediately in correspondence with them. He cycled to Le Mans to meet them when they made their first, very impressive, European flights. He applied for and took a job with the Royal Aero Club. He then found a job in the U.S.A. with a firm trying to build a gyrocopter. The machine was a failure and Roe came back to Britain but not discouraged.
In 1908 he flew his machine for the first time at Brooklands, powered by an Antoinette 24 h.p. engine on loan. He then moved to his brother's stables at Putney where he built a triplane powered by a 9 h.p. JAP engine.
Walthamstow Marsh was the location of Roe's later attempts to build and fly his early aeroplanes. Despite many failures, Roe continued his experiments and there is now a blue plaque commemorating his first successful flight there (in July 1909) on one of the railway arches where he worked.
FIRST - Classification Variable: Item or Event
Date of FIRST: 07/01/1909
More Information - Web URL: [Web Link]
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