Badminton House
BADMINTON HOUSE: Temporary Landing Ground
Operated by: Maurice Tabuteau
Period of operation: 17th April 1911
Location: Badminton House is just N of Acton Turville village on the B4040, which is just N of the M4. About 9.5nm NW of Chippenham town centre and roughly 14nm NE of Bristol city centre
A MICHAEL T HOLDER GALLERY
We have Mike Holder, a great friend of this 'Guide', to thank for doing the research on this location.
Note: The article was published in the Birmingham Daily Gazette on the 18th April 1911.
This photo was published in Flight magazine on the 29th April 1911. It shows Tabuteau with Countess Nora Lützow.
The article was published in Flight magazine on the 22nd April 1911. The area view is from my Google Earth © derived database.
NOTES: Maurice Tabuteau, then working for the British and Colonial Aeroplane Company, (Bristol), at FILTON, was invited to give a flying display at Badminton House. He flew across with his mechanic Herbert Thomas on the 17th April 1911, and the illustrious group of spectators assembled there were so impressed by the ease with which he flew, many elected to ask him to take them for a flight. They used the Bristol biplane No.22 - presumably a 'Boxkite'?.
Powered aircraft were of course still in their infancy, the British arriving late on the scene, with the first recorded flights being in 1909. There is however, one very important aspect about this period to bear in mind, that being that when it came to powered aviation, the class barriers were pretty much discarded by all involved. A unique situation in a society still very much normally observing very clear class distinctions.
We had the aristocracy involved right down to people like Alliott Verdon Roe, and Geoffrey de Havilland and others working very much on a shoestring budget. The common objective for all being to develop ideas around both building, designing better aircraft, and researching how these machines actually flew. Virtually nothing was known about the subject, and indeed, even after the massive progress made in WW1, the science of aeronautics was to take many more years before becoming established.
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