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Next Yes it’s a fact! A man named Laker started an air service in Nuneaton in 1919 and no it is nothing to do with Sir Freddie Laker – that’s official. There, of course, the similarity ends but it shows how inadequately we know the history of this town, that at one time, for just a very few years during the a couple decades of the last century the airfield at Nuneaton was possibly one of the most important in the country. It had an aircraft hanger larger than the one at London’s airport at Hendon in those pioneering days of rickety plane travel.
The reason is very simple, Nuneaton was, and still is, just over half way between London and Manchester. It had a strategic role to play in the early days of aviation.
The starting point was the Daily Mail air race of 1908. A £10,000 prize was offered. The course from London to Manchester was 183 miles and the journey had to be completed in 24 hours. Without any navigational aids at all the only good indication of where to fly was by following the main railway line from London to Manchester. The trouble was at junctions it was not clear which way to go. The aviators might have taken the wrong turning and ended up miles out of their way and re-fuelling point, having to crash land in a bumpy field. That might be the end of that. So they applied to the London & North Western Railway company who obligingly painted the sleepers at junctions on the correct route white. By this simple means they knew which railway line to take. In those days aircraft were extremely primitive and it was very important that fuel could be obtained en-route. As they got to Nuneaton they had to look out for their rendezvous point with their fuel supplies. For the Daily Mail race a point was chosen near Polesworth where there was a suitable flat field.
Later this habit of flying up to Manchester became popular with pioneer aviators and a large field next to the railway line at Attleborough Fields was used. It was both flat and commodious enough not to be too dangerous if you overflew the landing spot. By 1913 it was a regular occurrence for planes to sputter to a stop at Attleborough. Edward Ferdinand Melly the local pit owner at Griff decided to help his brother who was a keen amateur flyer to visit him at Nuneaton by installing a large hanger. The year was 1915. This enormous shed was said to be larger than that which had been installed three years earlier in 1912 at Claude Graham-White’s 220 acre airfield just north of London at Hendon.
The First World War intervened although it is highly probable that the airfield at Attleborough was pressed into use for war service. After the war aviation technology had improved so that just before Whitsuntide in 1919. Mr. Trevor T. Laker, a well-known motorcycle competition rider founded his aeroplane passenger service from Nuneaton. Presumably from the Attleborough Fields aerodrome. When I enquired from Sir Freddie whether he knew this man thinking perhaps Trevor Laker was his father he said no, he had never heard of him!
From here on the investigation runs out of steam. I assume the airfield lasted into the twenties and I was told that sometime around the late 20’s the hanger was dismantled and erected in Riversley Park where it was used for oil and petroleum storage for a few years until it was taken down to build Riversley Park clinic. How true that is I cannot say.
One pleasant day in 1929 the late Phillip Vernon was playing in the Meadow Street Recreation Ground when a huge cigar shaped object blotted out the sun and hove into view seemingly hovering just above the tops of the chimney pots. As a kid he was shocked and startled. More or less I guess the same way we would be if a UFO settled silver and shimmering over Nuneaton Town Centre today. It was, of course, the infamous and ill-fated R101 air ship on a test flight from Cardington, Bedfordshire.
So Nuneaton with its connections with the famous aircraft designer Geoffrey De-Havilland has a lot to celebrate about its aircraft heritage if only we could find out more than these few scraps I have set before you today!
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