Painted in watercolours. 2006. 250mm x 300mm

‘White Waltham Tigers’

During the early 1930s, civil airfields in Berkshire experienced mixed fortunes. Just a few months after Charles Powis opened Reading Aerodrome, the aviation pioneer, Donald Stevenson, having built up his successful motor dealership, decided to create an airfield and club at Bray, near Maidenhead.

It opened with a fanfare of local publicity but, just eight weeks later, without any clear reason for doing so, it ceased to function. The airfield was used when Sir Alan Cobham brought his ‘Flying Circus’ to Maidenhead in 1932 and continued to be used intermittently for many years.

A few years after Bray first opened, an airfield with the grandiose title of Cookham International Airport was opened a few miles away. It appears that an adjacent hotel, hoped to cash-in on Maidenhead’s then reputation for  being the place for ‘naughty weekends’. Photographs showed that the airfield attracted a few flyers from France and Germany but the generally poor ground conditions counted against it, as well as the local council and some nearby residents. The ‘international airport’ did not survive long

In 1935, what was to be by far the most successful of East Berkshire’s airfields came into being when the de Havilland company opened White Waltham as a Reserve Flying School for the R.A.F. Tiger Moths, with their distinctive red and silver livery, were a familiar sight in the Maidenhead area until the outbreak of World War II.

____________________

Gallery                Next painting               Contact me