I recently walked past the Pump House, a small museum at 10 South Access Road, Walthamstow. It is quite a sleepy, unassuming sort of a place, close to St James Park, with a number of interesting vehicles on display in the yard - old buses, trucks, rolling stock and underground trains. They are quite proud that many of these items were actually build locally, Walthamstow having at one time been a hive of industry and new technology, where the British film industry was first developed and the first cars and even planes were built. Its a pity that this is not much known about. Its certainly not something I was aware of for years, even though I've lived here for a couple of decades.

Industrial, and its subset, aviation heritage, is, of course, very much a minority interest. It does interest me though, to learn that Walthamstow was the site of the flight of the first wholly built British aircraft by A V Roe. This was on Walthamstow Marshes in July 1909. Read Wikipedia and they will only tell you that the AVRO company was founded in 1910 up in Manchester, giving no idea that the working plane had already been built and tested prior to that down here. AVRO went on to build the AVRO 504, a successful World War 1 fighter (and rudimentary bomber) which was later supplied to various warlords in China in the 1920s. AVRO also went on to develop the Lancasters which dropped 608,612 tons of bombs in the Second World War and helped obliterate Dresden.

A version adapted by Barnes-Wallis bombed the Ruhr Dams as part of Operation Chastise. AVRO, which merged with Hawker Siddeley in 1963, developed the AVRO Blue Steel nuclear stand-off bomb which was a key element in British defense policy in the the Cold War. The firm had entered the jet age with the Vulcan in 1953, a plane which was used in anger during the Falklands war in 1982.

I am pleased that some sort of celebration of the beginnings of flight in the Britain, with a replica, is planned by the Pump House Museum for next year. There is also a long and peaceful history of civil aviation worth celebrating as well as the better known military heritage. The railway arches which the plane was constructed under are still there on our local marshes. Amid the tranquility, joggers, bird-watchers and dog walkers probably do not often notice the blue plaque or understand its historic significance.

The local historical society is marking the anniversary with a lecture on AV Roe on 8 Jamuary 2009.

(Updated 22 April 2009)