Brompton Hall
Note: This map only gives a general location within the UK. If anybody knows a more exact position, this advice will be most welcome.
BROMPTON HALL: Private experimental flying and gliding site
First picture: This replica was flown by Derek Piggott in 1974 and it now resides in the Yorkshire Air Museum at ELVINGTON.
Second picture: This was scanned from the excellent book, British Aviation - The Pioneer Years, by Harald Penrose first published in 1967.
Operated by: Sir George Cayley
Activities: Multiple experiments into the science of flight mainly with models but later with at least two people carrying machines
Location: In Brompton Dale 6nm SW of Scarborough
Period of operation: Early 1800s to 1853 and probably later
NOTES: Today Sir George Cayley is justifiably famous in many circles for his research and discoveries into flight design and flight control techniques. The Wright brothers certainly attributed him with being the true pioneer of aeronautics. The most often quoted example of his ‘first’ person carrying ‘flying machine’ is, (when being aged 79 himself?), he elected to launch his coachman in a glider, (named his ‘New Flyer’), for a roughly a 500 metre flight in 1853. The coachman, having survived the experience intact, then quite rightly handed in his notice saying something like , “Please Sir George, I wish to give notice. I was hired to drive, and not to fly”. A thoroughly well reasoned request?
What seems to be often ignored today is that he launched a ten year old boy on a tethered glider or kite ‘flight’ back in 1849. In 1974 the famous British glider pilot Derek Piggott successfully re-enacted the 1853 flight in a replica Cayley ‘glider’ from this same site. But there is another aspect very important indeed to the understanding of our aviation history and, to put it bluntly, even our knowledge of and comprehension of UK history. Generally speaking we’re in the hands of historians, who are, as often as not, a very dodgy bunch of largely narrow-minded self-opinionated people at best? By comparison aviation historians appear to be an altogether more enlightened breed - and usually much more flexible in their approach to history.
A QUESTION?
Why isn’t the name of Sir George Cayley now considered ranked alongside other exceptional British subjects like Francis Drake, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Isaac Newton, Horatio Nelson and Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill? Looking at the subject a bit wider why haven’t statues been erected in the centre of London for Sir George Cayley and, for another example, Sir Alan Cobham? You’ll find plenty of statues erected to military people who often achieved three parts of bugger all by comparison and who today are largely forgotten by 99% of the population.
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