Joint Project Leader, Kingston Aviation Centenary Project, David
Hassard, writes…
A huge thank you to all our volunteers and all those
who were able
to turn up and enjoy the exhibition at the YMCA Hawker Centre in
Kingston upon Thames. The YMCA’s generous help in letting us use the
restaurant area of what was the Hawker Aircraft Athletic and Social
Club added a special Heritage Open Day element to the event and the
1928 Trojan car built in the factory made a unique outside exhibit on
the Saturday.
This exhibition was a special effort to recognise
that it is 100
years since the order was placed to build National Aircraft Factory
No.2 on this site and 25 years since it closed in 1992. In just twelve
hours, six hours each day, the welcome desk recorded an amazing 871
visitors, including 125 children, through the doors. At times we had to
hold back the queue to stop the room getting overcrowded. With
unrecorded visitors who jumped the queues total numbers must have been
over 900.
The exhibition included our ever popular twenty
panel portable exhibition of the entire history of the aviation
industry in Kingston and the associated sites at Brooklands, Langley
and Dunsfold. The new element was 20 panels with some 200 photographs
never before brought together, exposing a comprehensive history of the
Richmond Road Factory, its people and its products from 1917 to 1992,
including aerial photographs and maps.
The presence of Hawker Association Committee
members, including Frank Rainsborough, Barry Pegram and Chris Farara,
Richard Cannon and many member volunteers including Chris Roberts,
Colin Wilson, Kieron Kirk, Mike French, and Graham Weller, ensured that
ex-employees had a special welcome and the room was buzzing with
reminiscences and stories as old colleagues got together. A number of
new members were recruited and valuable contacts were made.
Joint Project Leader Bill Downey, as the curator of
our ‘Hawker people’ digital photo archive and website, was busy
constantly surrounded by people wanting to find images and bringing
along their own photos to be scanned.
Mike Frain’s initiative in devising guided tours of
the housing development on the factory site, to show residents and
others what once happened where they now live, was a great success.
With help from the Kingston Tour Guides, extra tours were added to cope
with demand. The specially prepared new overlay of the factory plan on
the current 360 home housing development was really popular.
Editors note. The Kingston Aviation Centenary
Project leaders and Steering Group members are to be congratulated on
an outstanding event, the result of much hard work since the beginning
of the year. It was worth it as the exhibition attracted more visitors
than all the other Heritage Open Day sites in the Kingston area added
together!
