YESTERDAY IN MELTON MOWBRAY

A thrilling account of the exciting and chaotic hot summer’s day in Melton Mowbray in 1911, when many thousands of exuberant people turned out to witness for the very first time the ‘miracle’ of the heavier than air ‘flying machines,’ in flight together with their intrepid pilots. _______________________________________________ PROLOGUE     The long awaited occasion of man’s first sustained flight in an heavier than air, powered aeroplane is pretty well known to the world as being recorded on a beach at Kitty Hawk, South Carolina in 1903, by the Wright brothers of that place.   The stuff of dreams of many young boys across the decades,  the veracity of this specific moment in time and the identities of the  people involved in the event remains open to serious discussion to the present day and the actual truth is still argued openly and keenly. This is especially so amongst aviators and other interested parties in F...

THE BUTCHER'S LAD, THE BARNSTORMER AND THE GRUBBER. Samuel Summerfield was one of eight siblings born in South Derbyshire in 1894 into a farming family. In 1900 when he was just six years of age, his family re-located a few miles south to the small market town of Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire where his father was to set up in business as a grazier and butcher providing meat for the local market. As a very young man, Samuel set himself the task of teaching himself to fly a heavier-than-air machine in the nearby fields and was later to obtain one of the first ‘British Aviators Certificates’ issued. During the Great War as a Captain in the Royal Flying Corps, he assisted in the training of the brave young pilots, who from all walks of life would fight and die in great numbers over the killing fields of France and Germany. In later years ‘Sam’ was to earn a living ‘barnstorming’ and providing leisure flights with a travelling air circus. At the age of 40 and unmarried...