Walthamstow Marsh: scene of an historic flight

At the time of writing, the skies above London are starting to fill with aircraft following a lengthy hiatus due to volcanic ash. The situation is unprecedented in British aviation history. Not since the first decade of the 20th Century have our skies arched so silently.

It seems an apposite moment to reflect on the last time that heavier-than-air vehicles were tentatively taking to the heavens. The "earliest flight from British soil ":https://firstflight.open.ac.uk/cody/cody.html took place above Farnborough on 29 September 1908, half a decade after the Wright Brothers first demonstrated the technology. The pilot was American Sam Cody (incidentally, the great grandfather of BBC reporter John Simpson). But the first powered flight by a British pilot, in a British-built plane from good old British soil took place in East London, around a mile from what is now the Olympic Park.

Back then, these railway arches on the edge of Walthamstow Marsh (top) were home to the workshop of Edwin Alliott Verdon Roe (1877-1958). It was here that Roe constructed his rather precarious-looking No1 triplane pictured below. On 5 June 1909, he unleashed it upon the marsh. The craft hopped about frustratingly, more intent on crashing than flying. With subsequent modifications, and growing confidence, Roe later achieved almost 300 metres of altitude over the marshes. Following his success, Roe went on to found the Avro aircraft company, famous manufacturers of the Lancaster and Vulcan bombers.

Roe’s initial achievement presents the rare opportunity to praise the Daily Mail. The newspaper arranged a competition to design a flying machine, which Roe subsequently won. His prize money eventually led him to build the triplane after promising tests with an earlier biplane.

The flight is marked by a pair of plaques on the ‘Avro arches’. The first is now difficult to read, thanks to a barrier. The newer plaque is pictured below.

As a final aside, the remnants of a very different flying machine can, remarkably, be seen in the Google map below. If you look to the bottom right, you’ll notice a circular patch of grass. This is the impact crater from a V2 rocket bomb – Hitler’s vengeance weapon that reached the edges of space before slamming down on its target. Having made something of a study of such things, this is the only instance I know of a WWII crater still visible in London.

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