Head's Newsletter 12 July 2019

AVIATION HISTORY TOUR

planes such as the NATO fighter, Hawker Hunter. Later, Sydney Camm and Ralph Hooper, working with Bristol Siddeley, designed the Hawker Harrier Jump-Jet, the first truly successful VTOL (vertical take off and landing) plane. The company later became nationalised, with many other companies and became BAe. BAe developed the Hawk in Kingston, used by the RAF Red Arrows Display Team. The Richmond Road Factory was finally sold in 1992. On our tour, we explored the landmarks around the local area. We started at the old Bentalls furniture depository (now the Odeon in the Rotunda), which was used for storage during WWII. Next we went to the Kingston Railway bridge, under which is a dip in the road. This dip was originally used so that trams could run underneath this but also made it easy for the transport of planes (without wings) transported to Brooklands, in Weybridge. After that, we saw the ice rink, used by the Sopwith Company and the Hawker company, due to the fact that ice rinks have no columns and therefore make it easier to manufacture planes there. Nearby was Sir Sydney Camm’s design office, where he would have designed the Hawker Hurricane. Next we went to the Siddeley House where the prototypes for the planes were made. Here you can find the original lifting crane and chains on a runner. There are many other clues that can be found on Canbury Park Road such as the propeller design on the fencing surrounding the housing estate, marking the site of the factory. Also, on this road is Sigrist square, named after Fred Sigrist, the engineer. There are many more interesting aviation landmarks across Kingston, such as the

Written by Ben Luca Attassi Quinton Y8 Over the past few weeks, each class in Year 8 went on an Aviation History Tour of Kingston and saw the clues to Kingston’s past aviation industry in the local area. This tour led us into our Summer History Project: creating a video documentary of a Tiffinian who died during the First World War. Going on this tour made us see that there is much more history in our town than is normally apparent from modern day Kingston. The aviation industry in Kingston started when Tommy Sopwith set up the ‘Sopwith Aviation in Kingston Company’. Tommy Sopwith, soon needing more space to build his planes, bought the Canbury Road ice rink and used it as a factory. This company continued to expand and it created the Sopwith Camel, Britain’s main fighter plane during the first World War, along with many other very successful planes. After the first World War the business went bust, but Tommy Sopwith and his colleagues re-entered the industry with the initially much smaller H.G Hawker Engineering Company (named after Harry Hawker who was the chief test pilot for Sopwith), in the 1920s. With Sydney Camm, H.G Hawker Engineering developed the ‘Hawker Fury’, the base design for the Hawker Hurricane, which had a pivotal role in the Battle of Britain, over the English Channel in 1940. The mass production of this aircraft was only possible because the Sopwith factory had already paved the way with designers, test facilities and factory production. The Hawker Company bought the Richmond Road factory after WWII and started to buy other companies. The Hawker Company started to develop new