Crewe Toll
CREWE TOLL: Temporary aerodrome
Operated by: Berkshire Aviation Company
Location: Ferry Road, Crewe Toll, roughly 1.5nm NW of Edinburgh city centre
Period of operation: 22nd or 23rd December 1919 to 4th January 1920
A MICHAEL T HOLDER GALLERY
I am blessed in having some very good friends of this 'Guide' to help produce it. Mike Holder being a key figure. Years after starting on this project I did have "CREW TOLL" listed with minimal information, and with a typo in the title! And, the 'typo' was not of my making! (For once).
The advert was placed in The Scotsman on the 20th December 1919. Note how already, Alan Cobham, later to become Sir Alan Cobham, was already becoming a significant figure.
The local area and area views are from my Google Earth © derived database.
NOTES: The age of the ‘Flying Circus’ is, without any doubt, the late 1920s and, even more so - the 1930s. However, it appears the Berkshire Aviation Company may well have been the first to conceive of the idea. Even if they weren't it now seems they were definitely a 'major player' in arranging impromptu dislays, especially to advertise their joy-riding venues, often away from seaside resorts, and operating all year round!
I imagine that much of this toughness and indeed resilience, probably stems from military service during WW1 - which was most definitely not seasonal. Indeed, I have seen photographs of them stripping down an engine on a bench, out in the open. Probably not in the depths of winter, but even so, cannot recall this being done anywhere when I was flying around. But that of course was much, much later, starting from the 1980s, when engine strip-downs were very much a workshop job requiring highly accurate machinery and tools etc.
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