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HMS Hornbill

1930s Landing Ground

The landing ground at Culham was certainly not unique. Private flying was being actively encouraged at the time and there were a number of other local landing grounds in use during the 1920s and 1930s.

Two brothers, Major George William Graham Allen and Captain James John Cullimore Allen, took over the large and long established Cowley based company of John Allen & Sons (Oxford) Ltd. upon the retirement of their father, John Allen. Major Allen, remained a bachelor living in the family home at The Elms in Iffley, south Oxford. A large garage in the grounds housed his renovated vintage cars, which was one of his many interests. One of his cars was a Daimler 10 H.P. from 1898, which he bequeathed to the Science Museum in South Kensington. The last member of the Allen family to live at The Elms was his brother, Cullimore Allen, who died in 1970. The house was eventually turned into the Hawkwell House Hotel.

Flying lessons and G-AAJJ

George Allen started learning to fly on 4th April 1929 with the Phillips & Powis School of Flying at Woodley aerodromeClick or tap to reveal our hidden page about Woodley Aerodrome and its fascinating story near Reading. The school and grass airfield had both only just started operating, and Allen was one of the first pupils. The instructor at the controls of the deHavilland Gypsy Moth, G-EBOT, was R.T.Shepherd and on 25th April after nine hours of tuition, Allen made his first solo circuit. He must have progressed rapidly as in June 1929 he bought his own DH.60G Gypsy Moth which was registered on the 23rd as G-AAJJ. It cost £650 ex-works and he flew it, accompanied by Phillips, from the deHavilland works on the outskirts of London to Woodley. During the July he flew almost every other day and began making longer flights.

Clifton Hampden landing ground

In late July he first flew to Clifton Hampden, returning a further three times before landing in a field there on 21st August. Prior arrangements must have been made with the landowner as, from that day on, the Gypsy Moth and all his flying activities were to be based there. His pilot's log from September reveals that he had started taking passengers up for flights, amongst whom were his sister Phebe and the works manager from Cowley. He certainly appears to have wasted no time in having a commodious hangar built and on one of his early flights, thought to be in 1930, he took an aeriel photograph of the areaClick or tap link to see the photograph.

It is not known whether any other aircraft were based at the airfield, or whether many others visited although, as well as having an entry in the AA list of registered landing grounds, it is mentioned a number of times in Flight International magazine. One such note appeared in the issue of October 25th 1934 which stated that '...There are hay-stacks on the southern boundary at Clifton Hampden...' A large sign can be seen facing down the main road on one of the photographs below and it may well be advertising the airfield and facilities being offered. It is presumed that the airfield ceased to be used towards the end of 1939 when Major Allen stopped flying, almost exactly 10 years after putting down there for the first time.

Map published by Ordnance Survey Office, Southampton in 1960
Reproduced courtesy of the National Library of Scotland

All evidence of the landing ground itself was to be obliterated following the requisitioning of it, and much surrounding land, to build the Royal Navy air station in 1942. However, the small area next to the road upon which the hangar stood remained outside the airfield perimeter. Maps of the time did not show military or other sensitive areas so the airbase, which was still being used as an Admiralty storage facility, is left blank on this map dating from 1959/60. Comparison between this map snippet and the AA diagram above reveals that the dotted boundary to the left follows the eastern edge of the old landing ground, and to the right the hangar, its hard standing, and road access appear to be unchanged. The three trees shown on the AA diagram are also to be found marked on the later map. The portion of the old hangar site lying to the right of the solid line, identified as 'Rod Eyot', was redeveloped for residential use and at the time of writing two adjacent cottages, numbers 3 and 4 Fullamoor Cottages, stand on the site.

G-ABKD Maid of the Mist II

It would appear his last flight in the Gypsy Moth was on 26th March 1931 and he sold it to the London Aero Club. On 28th March 1931, he became the registered owner of G-ABKD a new red DH.80A Puss Moth which he again collected from the factory. The registration document records its usual station as being Clifton Hampden. This enclosed cockpit high wing monoplane was a great improvement in both comfort and performance over the Gypsy Moth with a range of about 400 miles and a top air-speed of around 125 miles an hour. Major Allen named his new aircraft 'Maid of the Mist II', implying that his first aircraft had been called 'Maid of the Mist'.

This undated photograph from the Allen Collection at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford was taken by an unknown photographer and shows Major Allen standing beside G-ABKD on the small concrete apron outside his hangar at Clifton Hampden. It is felt that the aircraft is in newly delivered condition as the wheel spats are still fitted to the main landing gear wheels. These tended to get damaged when operating from grass airfields and also obstructed visual safety checks and access for maintenence and tyre pressure checks, so it is possible that they were soon removed. There was a tail skid rather than a small wheel at the back and to aid manual manouvering on the ground it would be placed on a wheeled dolly, the long handle of which can be seen above the tailplane.

Aerial photographs

During his cross-country flights, Major Allen began taking an interest in the various crop markings visible from the air. He realised that he was seeing evidence of archaeological sites, both known and also previously unrecorded. His interest and enthusiasm was heightened following contact with O.G.S.Crawford the co- author of a book about archaeology and flying called Wessex from the Air. Crawford was Britain’s leading aerial archaeologist at the time and archaeological officer of the Ordnance Survey. Allen now spent his evenings and weekends flying over various counties, taking photographs of archaeological sites, and other places of personal interest. His photographs were mostly oblique, taken from between 1,000-1,500 feet (300–450 metres) and he reckoned that to take 600 photographs he had to fly at least 12,000 miles. It is not known what cameras he used at first, but he quickly set out to replace them by ones of his own making. He was very busy photographing during the summer of 1933 and in the September he noted in a letter that ...'I contemplate making myself a camera, out of bits of course ... A nice winter's job.' The aluminium bodied camera was completed and in use by the February. He describes two cameras in some typed lecture notes. '...As I could not find a suitable camera for use when flying solo, I designed and made two... The oblique camera has a lens of f4.5 aperture and 8½ inches focal length and has only to cover a plate of 9 x 15 cm., so that only the central and best defined part of the image is used. The vertical camera is built into the machine and has a 6 inch lens.' He found the Puss Moth to be a very stable aircraft which allowed him to fly 'hands off' whilst operating his hand-held oblique camera. It would appear that the built-in vertical camera was not greatly used however. It is understood that he processed the plate negatives and printed all the photographs himself and noted some technical details in his planned book (see below) '...Panchromatic plates (speed 450 H. and D. [approximately 14 A.S.A.] have been found most suitable for all conditions, with a 1½ filter, a f4.5 lens (generally full open) and an exposure of 1/200th of a second. At a lower speed than this the photograph may show movement. A focal plane 90mm x 120mm camera was used, held by hand whilst piloting the machine.'

When sometimes faced with weather conditions which prevented him from taking photographs he would search out sites to return to when the weather improved, judging when shadows or crop growth might be just right for the best photographs. Allen was interested in the features he photographed and field-walked many sites to see what they looked like on the ground. He gave a number of illustrated talks to local societies and at the Ashmolean Museum, and before he died was in the process of writing a book Discovery from the Air. The drafts were used by O.G.S.Crawford to create a completed version which was passed to J.S.P.Bradford for publication. Bradford created an edited version of the book which was subsequently published as volume 10 of Aerial Archaeology in 1984, a copy of which is held in our collection.
Maintaining a railway connection, the Great Western Railway Magazine from February 1936 contained an article describing the (then) recent excavations at Maiden Castle by Mortimer and Verney Wheeler. One of the accompanying illustrations was an aerial photograph, seen on the right, taken by Major G.W.G.Allen. Between 1933 and 1938 Allen took about 2000 photographs with only a few in 1939, a contribution that enabled the study and interpretation of archaeological sites in several counties, but most especially in Oxfordshire.

In the afternoon of Sunday 27th August 1939 Major Allen took off for the last time and flew a circuit taking in the nearby Wittenham Clumps. This flight lasted about an hour and a half and by the following weekend all civilian flying had been suspended. On 27th October 1939, Allen transferred ownership of G-AKBD to the Secretary of State for Air for use in the Second World War, thus bringing to an end flying from Clifton Hampden. The vertical camera remained with the aircraft, but the home made oblique camera was retained by Allen.

G-ADLB - a racing plane

In 1935 Major Allen bought a second aeroplane, it was a Miles M.2H Hawk Major and was registered new on the 9th July with its usual station recorded as being Reading (Woodley). It seems that Allen never actually flew this aircraft himself and it was kept at Woodley, so whether or not it ever visited Clifton Hampden is uncertain. It was regularly piloted by Owen Cathcart-Jones, a professional competitive airman who, despite coming fourth in the actual race, had set a round-trip record in the 'MacRobertson Trophy Air Race' between London and Melbourrne the previous year. That September, Major Allen entered his Hawk Major, piloted by Cathcart-Jones, in the two day 'King's Cup' air race. Miles aircraft took the top three places with Cathcart-Jones only just being beaten into third place. According to the CAA register the Hawk Major was sold overseas (to Eduardo J.Tormey in Argentina) in the July of 1936.

This cigarette card from Carreras, no 15 of 50 in their Famous Airmen and Airwomen series, shows G-ADLB in flight, presumably being piloted by Cathcart-Jones, sometime during late 1935 or early 1936.

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Major George Allen was killed in a motor‐cycle accident on 24th November 1940 on the road between Nuneham Courtenay and Dorchester-on-Thames. After his death, Allen’s special camera, collection of photographs and other items were given to the Ashmolean Museum forming the basis of the Allen Collection.
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