1 - Photo by Simon Thomas

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 10

A replica of the 1910 Bristol Boxkite, Britain's first production aircraft of indigenous design, takes to the air above Old Warden.

'Old Warden is a distinctively British experience, harkening back to a time when the RAF was regarded as "the best flying club in the world" and the skies above the British Isles were almost entirely free of regulation'

In the heart the English countryside, near the Bedfordshire town of Biggleswade, lies the airfield known as Old Warden, home to the Shuttleworth Collection of vintage airplanes and vehicles. It's a magnet for true believers, enthusiasts who come to savor the sight and sound of wonderful old machines in an atmosphere that makes few concessions to the age of the microchip.

The collection was started before World War II by Richard Ormonde Shuttleworth, a wealthy Old Etonian pilot and auto racer who died on a training flight in a Royal Air Force Fairey Battle in August 1940. After the war Dorothy Shuttleworth, Richard's mother, set up the Shuttleworth Trust in memory of her son. The collection opened its doors to the public in 1963, with the first public air display taking place a year later.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Aviation History magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

To visit Old Warden, especially on a flying day, is to step several paces back in time, an illusion that begins when you drive through the local village of the same name, with its idyllic thatched cottages and a pub called The Hare and Hounds. As you drive on, a biplane crackles low overhead, the pilot's helmeted head clearly visible in the open cockpit as he turns in to land on the nearby grass runway.

The intoxicating whiff of yesteryear continues as, after rattling across cattle-grids and past the old Shuttleworth manor house, you enter a grass aerodrome that has been carefully preserved in the style of a 1930s flying club, complete with vintage hangars, control tower and, on themed pageant days, reenactors dressed in period costumes. The setting is determinedly rural, with farm buildings overlooking the opposite side of the main runway. The collection owns 39 aircraft, and 16 privately owned historic machines are also based at Old Warden. That number is set to increase once a new hangar is completed on the airfield's eastern side.

Even the British weather tends to suspend its customary bad habits on flying days at Old Warden. The sun shines more often than not, and for camera buffs there are typically backdrops of blue sky with fluffy cumulus and perhaps the occasional patch of brooding nimbostratus to pose the airplanes against.

The biplane that passed overhead a few moments ago has taxied across the grass to join a colorful lineup of other interwar airplanes with evocative names like Cygnet, Cirrus Moth, Hornet Moth, Hermes Moth, Swift, Tomtit, Elf, Anec, Humming Bird and Southern Martlet. Many of these aircraft are the only example of their type still flying, and in some instances the only one in existence. Nearby, from the same era, are a glistening silver Hawker Hind light bomber that once belonged to the Royal Afghan Air Force (and was brought back from Kabul overland, in a perilous 6,000-mile odyssey, for an 11-year restoration), an Avro Tutor and an impossibly elegant 1936 Miles Falcon with a raked forward windscreen and trousered undercarriage. More recently, a meticulously restored 1937 Hawker Demon two-seat fighter took up residence at Old Warden.

In a class of its own is the 1924 D.H.51 Miss Kenya, the oldest flying de Havilland aircraft in the world, which once belonged to Lord John Carberry, a member of Kenya's notorious "White Mischief" set. Transported back to England in June 1965 aboard an RAF Blackburn Beverly freighter, Miss Kenya underwent a lengthy restoration before flying again in March 1973.

Round the corner, rare original survivors of World War I are on parade: a Sopwith Pup, an Avro 504K trainer, a Bristol F.2b Fighter and an S.E.5a scout of the type flown with such devastating success by Royal Flying Corps aces Edward "Mick" Mannock and James McCudden. S.E.5a G-EBIA, a veteran of the Western Front with No. 84 Squadron, was one of 50 that came onto the civil market in 1920. Subsequently used by Major Jack Savage's Skywriting Company, it was later found hanging from the roof of a flight shed. In 1955 G-EBIA became the subject of a major restoration project by apprentices of the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough on behalf of the Shuttleworth Collection. It took to the air again in 1957, and later was completely rebuilt at Old Warden.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to