Aeronauts in Forest Gate

In conjunction with local historians, Mark Gorman (@Flatshistorian) and Peter Williams, we examine how Wanstead Flats have been used for various kinds of flying and look at some of the early aeronauts who have lived in the Forest Gate area.

Balloonists

There are big skies over Wanstead Flats, and people have been flying through them for nearly two centuries.

The earliest recorded landing on the Flats was in September 1838, when a party of balloonists who had set out from Vauxhall, south of the Thames, came down on what they described as “a lone heath”. The locals soon provided them with company, offering to “look after” the balloon overnight. When this was refused they threatened to shred the balloon, but eventually drifted off home. The intrepid balloon party retired to a local pub (the old “Eagle & Child” in Woodgrange Road.)

More balloons were to appear over the Flats in the following years, and some well-known balloonists lived in the area. Among them was Thomas Wright, an East End photographer who ended up living in Forest Gate. He was an early pioneer of ballooning.

While running his photography business in East India Dock Road in the early 1870s, he came across Henry Croxwell and struck up a ballooning partnership with him.

The Illustrated London News of January 1900 described Croxwell, a one-time dentist, as “the foremost balloonist of the last half of the nineteenth century”. Croxwell made his first balloon flight, aged 25, in 1844 and within four years was described as a professional balloonist.

In his 1889 autobiography, My Life and Balloon Experiences, Croxwell mentions Wright as an important ally in the rapidly developing art of ballooning:

Mr. Thomas Wright, the well-known Crystal Palace aeronaut, became my deputy, and acquitted himself in first-rate style. That gentleman had kindly and efficiently assisted me on some previous occasions, taking charge of my balloon, and commending himself … by his straightforward conduct; he has since become a regular yearly attendant with balloons of his own … and is ably supported by his friends Mr. Dale ... who have both had considerable experience in ballooning; so that with their united efforts this feature of the entertainment is not likely to fall into the hands of those who are incompetent, or who have not deserved to succeed as Mr. Wright has done.

A post-retirement photo of Henry Croxwell

Croxwell’s reference to the “Crystal Palace aeronaut” is illuminating. In 1859 the Crystal Palace, built for the Great Exhibition in central London of 1851, was moved to the south-east London area that now bears its name. The site is on a hill, dominating the local area, which, because of its elevated position, later became a key aerial for early BBC radio transmissions. Its lofty position also made it an ideal spot for balloonist trips, which became expensive tourist attractions in their own right.

The tourist attraction of the Crystal Palace in south London. Photo taken soon after Wright and Dale used it as a base for their aeronautics.

Wright flew balloons from Crystal Palace and in and around London on an almost daily basis, at heights of up to 15,000 ft. Like other pioneers of ballooning he, along with Croxwell and Dale (see below), offered pleasure flights at £5 per passenger (about £500 today, using the Bank of England inflation calculator).

When Croxwell retired from the balloonist scene in the 1880s Wright took over as the main operator, trading with upto 4 balloons at a time. He moved from Poplar to Plaistow in the early 1880s, where his soon-to-be assistant William Dale also lived. 

Dale was born in Merton, Surrey in 1845 and had moved to Plaistow by 1881, when the census described him as a watchmaker. Ballooning soon became more than a hobby for him, so by 1891 he described himself to the census enumerator as an "aeronaut".

William Dale (left), preparing for a flight at Crystal Palace

He became known as Captain William Dale (it was a tradition that aeronauts called themselves Captain) and he soon took over Wright's balloon operations. Dale entertained crowds at the funfairs with balloon ascents and attracted international attention. GM Bacon, in The Record of an Aeronaut, published in 1907, described him thus: "Captain Dale was a short, powerfully built man ... full of life and energy, with a keen grey eye and a jovial manner."

Dale died in a well-publicised balloon accident at the Crystal Palace in 1892, when a tear in the fabric caused the balloon to plunge into the ground. Major Baden FS Baden-Powell (brother of Boy Scouts' founder, Robert) was a significant aeronaut, being associated with the Aeronautic Society for 57 years, until his death in 1937. He described the circumstances surrounding Dale's death, in his 1907 book, Ballooning as a Sport.

He recalled how he - Baden-Powell - had sold an old worn out and defective balloon to a dealer, who in turn sold it on to Dale, who attempted to patch it up and sell it on: "emulating the magician in Aladdin, (he) had the great invention of converting old balloons into new ones". Unfortunately, that balloon, The Eclipse, crashed on its first ascent in India, having only reached a height of 2-300 feet, killing its aeronaut.

Dale was clearly not deterred. Baden-Powell continued:

Meanwhile poor Dale doubtless thought he had found the elixir of life for balloons, and prepared a second old balloon in the same way, and what proves that he did not realise the danger or intentionally commit so awful a blunder, made an ascent himself in it, accompanied by his son and others. This balloon acted in just the same way as the first, bursting ere it was clear of the Crystal Palace grounds, and dashing to earth its human freight - Dale and one of his companions being killed, the others dreadfully injured.

The inquest, at which Thomas Wright spoke,  found that the fabric of Dale's balloon was old and weak, and patched from several balloons. Below is a press report recording Dale's fatal fall and a drawing accompanying his obituary in an Australian newspaper. Below these is a photograph of his grave in the East Ham parish church graveyard.

Chelmsford Chronicle 8 Jul 1892

A drawing of Dale,from an Australian obituary

  

Grave of Captain Dale – St Mary Magdalen East Ham parish church

 

 

 

 

 

		57 Cecil Road, Plaistow - Dale's final home - today Wright, meanwhile, survived, and following the death of his wife, moved to 15, Margery Park Road, in Forest Gate, between Romford Road and West Ham Park, where he was resident at the time of the 1891 census. Thomas Wright (left) ascending in one of his balloon voyages In August 1897 he told the Forest Gate Weekly News (see accompanying photo below) that his ballooning had not exactly been profitable :

"I do not think I have lost money over it, but I do not think I have made very much. I suppose I should average £20 per journey and I have had all my balloons ... going up on different parts of the country on one day. But then I have had to pay as much as £100 damages at one time and the return journeys by road and the hotel charges are very expensive."

A photograph of Thomas Wright from 1897

Wright was possibly a bit economical with the truth when he declared “I don’t think I have made very much”. He was from a modest background and would not have earned a great deal as a photographer, before becoming a prominent balloonist. But by the 1890s was living in a rather splendid house (see below) and the Lloyds Weekly Newspaper of 12 May 1901 shows him advertising eight, six-roomed houses for sale, presumably as a developer/landlord.

He died in Margery Park Road on 5 September 1912, aged 79. Probate records show that he left £19,515 in his will - a huge amount for the time for a one-time jobbing photographer - representing 122 times the average national salary of contemporary lower middle-class worker.

Wright's death is widely regarded as marking the end of the golden age of ballooning.

15 Margery Park Road today

Unfortunately there is no record that Wright, Dale or other local balloonists flew from Wanstead Flats and it wasn’t until the early 20^th century that an attempt was made to launch a flying machine.

 Powered kites

In November 1901 Col. Samuel Cody (not related to "Buffalo Bill" Cody), an American inventor, showman and part-time actor demonstrated his military reconnaissance kite on the Flats. Sadly for Cody (who was appearing in a Wild West drama at the Theatre Royal Stratford at the time) a windless day meant that the kite failed to take off properly. This amused the crowd of small boys present, but not the British military, who didn’t adopt Cody’s invention.

A Cody man-lifting kite (source:here)

Here are extracts from his diary....

1901

1 November: Experiment to take place on Wanstead Flats. Wrote to War Office (WO) saying he "was about to attempt some kite experiments using a kite of my own invention called the Viva kite similar to the American Blue Hill Box Kite i.e. flown on that principle with certain additions which I claim are an advantage over any kites yet flown". He also claimed to be the maker of the largest kite in the world. Length 27ft. Width 13 ft. Height 5 1/2 ft. with a spread of 657 sq ft.

14 November: Cody and assistants dressed as cowboys and riding horses tried unsuccessfully to give kite exhibition at Wanstead Flats. Cody told the crowd that his kites, so far, lifted only bags of sand.

20 November: Filed a provisional application for patent no. 23566 - Improvements in Kites and apparatus for the same. Cody residing at 38 Grove Crescent Road, Stratford. (now council flats, just behind Golden Grove pub).

26 November: Received letter from WO saying that they had been unable to attend his kite trials at Wanstead Flats but hoped to attend any further trials (source:here).

Model aero club

Probably the first flight of any form of aircraft from the Flats was in about 1909, by members of the Leyton and District Model Aero Club. The club which initially met by the Model Yacht Pond (now Jubilee Pond) at the Dames Road end of the Flats, flew very basic model aircraft and gliders. To this day, Wanstead Model Flying Club has a licence from the City of London, managers of Epping Forest, to fly radio-controlled aircraft on the Flats. They now have a landing ground just off Centre Road, between Forest Gate and Wanstead.

 

 

 

The club in the 70s/80s. Source Newham council archives

In more recent times paragliders, launched by being towed across the Flats at speed by a Land Rover, were for a brief period in the 1990s a Sunday afternoon feature.

Space exploration

The Flats has also played a part in UK space exploration. In 1965 the Daily Mirror reported on the British Interplanetary Travel Society, which had launched more than 30 rockets from the Flats over the previous decade. One launch achieved a height of 100 feet (30 metres). Edward Harris, the society's chairman explained that the group's main aim was: "to beat the Americans. By 1970 we should be really going places". That worked, then!

Footnote: Special thanks to David Webb of East London History Society Newsletter, Winter 2014-15, for the information on Thomas Wright. Full article: here

The street where you live (1) - Woodford Road

This is the first in an occasional series of articles by local historian, Peter Williams, who specialises in Newham housing, maps and local history. In each he will be looking, in detail, at the history of particular streets in Forest Gate.

See here for Peter's history of the Fire Brigade in Forest Gate, posted earlier on this blog.

Peter has complemented his own knowledge by accessing the increasingly digitised national newspapers' collection - which can be found via FindMyPast.com - and has added extracts from this that refer specifically to the roads he will feature.  The reproduction isn't always great, so we have transcribed sections of them. They add greatly to an understanding of social circumstances of the time. Some, with hindsight, are quite amusing today.
Peter would like to express thanks to fellow local historians Lloyd Jeans, Mark Gorman and this website for further informing his work.

Woodford Road

The current Woodford Road lies to the north of the town centre, right on the edge of the modern London Borough of Newham. The Eagle and Child pub also goes back many centuries (though the surviving building, opposite the Lord Lister clinic, is, itself Victorian).

Rocque's map of 1746 marks the Eagle and Child, which would have been used by cattle drovers. They brought cattle, on foot, from the north of England and Wales to the great annual cattle market that was held on Wanstead Flats (probably the origin of the current fairs).

Woodgrange Farm can be seen on the Rocque map, just south of the junction of what is now Forest Lane. The modern Woodgrange estate lies over this farm.

Portion of Rocque's 1746 map,
showing Eagle and Child and surrounds

The original Forest Gate (literally the toll gate lying at the southern limit of Epping Forest - the gate was used to control the flow of the cattle drovers) was located between the Eagle and Child and the current Lord Lister surgery.

1851 print of"Ye Olde Toll Gate",
 Forest Gate 1851

The next useful map is the 1863 Ordnance Survey, published in 1873. Much of the area was still rural in character. The other day, I (Peter) met somebody who lives locally – who had a relative in the 1830's who kept poultry just behind the Eagle and Child.

To get a clearer view of this map, click here 

To quote Robert Clayworth's 1837 Sun Insurance schedule "3 tenements north side of the Eagle and Child in Epping Forest". In the mid nineteenth century this area was largely rural, but on the urban fringe. Clayworth had a poulterer's shop on the Mile End Road and a stall in Leadenhall market, in the City.

The 1895 Ordnance Survey map, below, is noticeably different from the 1860's map, as the 1870's was the main period of development in the area, with speculative builders knocking up terraced houses cheaply and quickly.
Sidney Road has some notably large villas still surviving. That area was developed from 1900.

To get a clearer view of this map, click here

Notice that the southern area of Wanstead Flats is part of West Ham borough council, with the boundary angling past 113 Woodford Road. To the north was Wanstead and Woodford urban district council.

The map show more or less the current street pattern. This also marks the arrival of the Tottenham and Forest Gate Junction railway (now the Barking - Gospel Oak line), with Wanstead Park station opened in 1894.

You can see Angell Pond at the junction of Capel Road and Woodford Road, developed by West Ham council engineer Lewis Angell to assist drainage on the Flats, which were very boggy.

A bandstand soon appeared, to be demolished in the 1950's. The tinted photo of the bandstand in the first decade of the last century (below) shows it in its fully glory.

Tinted photograph of bandstand
 on Wanstead Flats c 1910

Bandstand in the distance, avenue of
 trees known as Monkey's Parade,
 1910, around Angell Pond

The tree avenue, to the right of the bandstand in the photo, was known as Monkey's Parade.
  
A contributor to the Newham Story, in a recollection of the Parade in the early years of the twentieth century, said:

Every Sunday when she was a kid, all the men would dress up in their best clothes and walk the streets to attract the girls or simply to be on their way to see a girl they already had an arrangement with. Winny and her mates would get a bucket of water and a load of newspaper, soak the paper in the water, wad it up into a ball, then try and knock the hats off the young men walking by.

The photo below is a pre 1908 view of the old pond, on the opposite side of Centre Road, before it was enlarged to become the Model Yacht pond. Dames Road is in the background of this photo.

Below is the same pond, in about 1908, when it had been developed fully for model yachting.  There are impressive crowds in the background. It was used for much of the time up to the 1960's for model boating - hence its popular name - but subsequently the pond fell into disrepair, did not retain water and became more of an eyesore than an amenity.

Local concern about the state of disrepair at the turn of this century resulted in a considerable refurbishment of the pond as a wild life preserve and educational facility, and its re-branding.  It is now known as Jubilee Pond, but continues to suffer from problems associated with water loss and leakage.

View from a similar position, today

An 1893 OS map shows a small pond with its more northerly end opposite Ramsey Road. Works were undertaken in 1905-6 to improve drainage to Wanstead Flats which included laying surface drains from Leytonstone to this pond. Unemployed labour, mainly from West Ham was used to enlarge the pond to its present size, extending it to both the north and south. Surface water using drains in Cann Hall Road and Sidney Road fed into the enlarged pond, which opened in 1908.

The fairs

As mentioned, above, the fair goes back centuries and is bound up with the movement of livestock into London to feed a growing population, before the advent of railways, in the 1840's.

Cattle were driven distances on foot and arrived in East London in poor condition. They needed to be fattened up before being driven to Smithfield for slaughter. They were grazed in the Flats and deals were done in local pubs like the Three Rabbits in Manor Park (see next week's post!) and the Eagle and Child.

Local farm owners continue to have grazing rights for their cattle over Wanstead Flats. A right that readers who have been familiar with the area for more than a couple of decades may well remember.  It was only an outbreak of BSE in the late 1990's that has effectively stopped (interrupted?) that practice. The delightful photo below records a relatively frequent event, up until the 1980's of cows wandering down Woodford Road.

Cows from Wanstead Flats wandering
 down Woodford Road in the 1980s

The Flats were also used for horse fairs, and travellers had caravans on the Flats. Within living memory, travellers were born in vans on the Flats. It became a funfair in the late nineteenth century.  See below for photograph of the Whitsun fair in 1905.

Whitsun Fair, 1900

Trams

This blog has covered the history of trams and Forest Gate previously, see here. The photograph below shows trams at the terminus in Woodford Road. The trams stopped where the houses ended.

The turning to the left is Forest Road. When larger numbers of passengers began to use the services, additional tracks were laid in Forest Road and then at the western end of Capel Road, to facilitate additional traffic. Later the Forest Road length was joined to tracks from the Leyton borough tramways, allowing them to merge in Woodford Road.

West Ham Corporation tramcar no 45
 in 1905. The trams stopped where the
 houses ended, just at the borough boundary.

The tram terminus office was located in Bective Road, as this photo from 1903 shows.

Tram terminus offices in Bective Road, 1903

Social survey - 1907

As this site has previously mentioned (see here), Howard and Wilson, in 1907,  set out to describe conditions in their highly-acclaimed  "West Ham - a study in industrial problems".  They said this of the area, around Woodford Road:

A great part of the western section of the ward, that between the Woodford Road and Tower Hamlets Road, belonged to the Dames estate. In 1855, it was sold in plots of 75 to 80 feet by 100 to 110 feet, but was developed very slowly, a few houses being put up at a time. In about 1866 it was bought by a land company, and the development became more rapid. Londoners, such as Curtain Road (Shoreditch) cabinet makers and inhabitants of Whitechapel, often bought plots for gardens.

  They used to put up huts and spend the week-end in them, and many built houses at a later time. A large number of the plots were bought by the Conservative Land Society and United Land Company, who cut them up into smaller plots and resold them for sites. Building ceased about 1880.

In Dames Road, which for the most part runs northward from Woodford Road, are some new flats, with separate front doors. The accommodation consists of four rooms and a wash-house downstairs, and three rooms and a wash-house upstairs. They were built in 1903, and are inhabited mostly by newly married City clerks.

These flats are very strictly kept, as they are in great demand. The rest of Dames Road, which was built in 1878, is chiefly inhabited by clerks and businessmen in the City, and has shops on one side of the southern end. The rents vary from 8s 6d, per week to £40 per year.

What the Papers say

Below are a series of newspaper cuttings, from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries referring to the area. They offer useful contemporary insights to conditions in the area; and the longest one, offers a delightful description of the Easter fair on the Flats in 1898.

Chelmsford Chronicle - 14 December 1900

Transcript:

Wanstead. 

Urban Council, Dec 7

Mr RA Ellis chairman

The road across the Flats - The Essex County Council wrote offering £100 as a contribution towards the cost of widening the road across the flats. The Clerk said the cost of the widening was estimated at £600, and the Wan-.stead Council had decided that £100 was a fair.contribution from that parish. The Forest Gate.Ratepayers' Association would probably give£100, making a total of £300 - The Clerk was.directed to write to the West Ham Town Council.again asking for a contribution.

As a result, Centre Road in its current form was developed at the turn of the century

Chelmsford Chronicle - 5 April 1907

Transcript:

Petitions are being signed in Forest Gate and Leytonstone asking the City Corporation to abolish the Bank Holiday fair on Wanstead Flats.

Plus ca change - residents unhappy with the disturbance caused by bank holiday fairs. As working class people acquired more leisure time towards the end of the nineteenth century (enshrined in the Bank Holidays Act and the half day closing of shops), Epping Forest, in general, and Wanstead Flats in particular, became a major leisure destination for workers from Inner East London.

There were works outings, picnics and sports teams arriving in large numbers, by train, charabancs and especially by trams, which were cheaper than trains.

Thousands could turn up on a busy day, as shown in the cutting below, from 1898.

Chelmsford Chronicle - 15 April 1898

Partial transcript:

Bank Holiday on Wanstead Flats

by a Perambulating Pressman

Wanstead Flats have long been a favourite resort for the East London Bank Holiday crowd, and this Easter my curiosity led me to Wanstead to see how their amusement is catered for. ...

 The streets were thronged with people and all were enjoying themselves with that absolute abandon which is so characteristic of the Easter holiday maker. ...

The young ladies ... sang with a gusto which only high spirits could produce, but "Marry the girl you fancy" was the popular refrain.

 There are several railway stations "quite adjacent" to the Flats, and a good service of buses is capable of rapidly transporting visitors to the gay scene, but for the holiday traffic special brakes were put on the route from Stratford, and at: "Tuppence all the way", these command full complements of passengers. ...

The centre of the fun, I found, was on Dames Road, had by the Holly Tree Tavern. Here was a gigantic country fair, or rather twenty country fairs rolled into one, constituting a scene of startling splendour, which is difficult easily to describe. A gorgeous merry-go-round occupied a central position, rivalling in its gold and brilliant colours, its mirrors and dazzling lights, scenes depicted in the Arabian Nights.

 ... This elaborate piece of mechanism must have cost a small fortune, but it was providing a gold mine to its proprietors.

 ... A "wild Indian chief" emerged into the open, brandishing a sword and uttering horrible gutteral sounds. He was silenced in summary fashion by the proprietor, who gave graphic accounts of the sights to be seen inside. Meanwhile the "Indian Chief" had disappeared into the wigwam and I followed bent on investigations.

Answering a common-place remark, the wild warrior lapsed into unmistakable Cockneyese, and openly admitted he was a fraud. ...

Chelmsford Chronicle - 23 June 1911

Transcript:

Harem skirt scare 

Near the bandstand on Wanstead Flats on Sunday night somebody shouted "Haremskirt!" A crowd at once gathered around a lady who was smartly dressed and fol-lowed her to the tram terminus. By the time the Woodford-road was reached over.500 people had collected, and the young lady had to board a tramcar going to Stratford to avoid them. She was wearing a hobble skirt.

A hobble skirt was a skirt with a narrow enough hem to significantly impede the wearer's stride, and was a short-lived fashion trend around the turn of the twentieth century and the early 1910's

Chelmsford Chronicle - 23 September 1921

Transcript:

Model Yachting

The race for the Hall Cup in connection with the Forest Gate Model Yachting Club was held on Saturday, and was a win for the Vice Commodore, Mr Breach. Messrs. Copper and Wilson tied for second place.