Memorial to the Home of Aviation

The Aero Club established a flying ground at Leysdown in 1909, with its clubhouse at Mussel Manor, near sheds where the Short Brothers assembled licensed versions of the Wright Flyer. The Short Brothers factory moved to a better site at Standford Hill, south of Eastchurch, in 1910, where its Grade II listed sheds survive. The Aero Club moved to Stonepitts Farm near Eastchurch, and the Admiralty established a Royal Navy flying school at the Eastchurch flying ground in 1911, which became the headquarters of the Naval Wing of the newly-established Royal Flying Corps in 1912, and then the location of a Royal Naval Air Service station in 1914, and later RAF Eastchurch. The Stonepitts site is now…

The memorial was designed by the Kent county architect Sidney Loweth and comprises a curtain wall facing to the east faced with Portland stone, bearing allegorical sculptures and a frieze of early aircraft, sculpted by Hilary Stratton. It was constructed by G.E. Wallis and Sons of Maidstone (who in earlier years had constructed the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment Cenotaph in Maidstone, and the Royal Berkshire Regiment War Memorial in Reading). The upper white Portland stone panels of the memorial are support by lower walls of Kentish ragstone with integral wooden seating, and the area below is paved with flint cobbles. Beneath the central plinth is an area covered with blue glass…