Exhibition explores key role in aviation history

A replica of the first UK seaplane will be flying again at Windermere this year

An exhibition will tell the story of a town's key role in the development of aeroplanes later this month.

Windermere was the first place in the UK where flights took off from water, paving the way for a flying boat factory being built on its shores during World War Two.

The exhibition at Windermere Library is organised by the Waterbird Project, which also announced new flights of the replica of the first UK seaplane.

Ian Gee, chairman of Lakes Flying Club, which is behind the Waterbird Project, said: "We are delighted to finally get a permanent display paying tribute to the people behind Waterbird and the crucial part it played in the development of aviation in the UK."

The original Waterbird was the first seaplane to successfully fly in the UK in 1911.

It was commissioned by Edward Wakefield as a landplane and converted to a seaplane at Windermere, where the pilot was Herbert Stanley Adams.

The new display will be next to the From Auschwitz to Ambleside exhibition, which highlights how 300 children who survived the Nazi death camps were flown to Carlisle at the end of the war and settled in the Calgarth Estate on the shores of the lake.

The children stayed in the temporary accommodation just vacated by workers at the Short Brothers factory, which built the Sunderland flying boats during World War Two.

'Proud history'

Lake District Holocaust Project director Trevor Avery said: "The Lake District has a proud history of industry and enterprise that demands recognition - none more so than the exploits of Captain E W Wakefield in the early years of the 20th Century.

"It was Captain Wakefield who initiated the development in the UK of aeroplanes able to take off from water and copyrighted the stepped float which made it possible."

The free exhibition opens on 27 August, with flying displays scheduled for 6 and 7 September.

The 35ft-long (11m) replica of Waterbird made its first flight in 2022 - 111 years since the original's first flight.

Another more modern seaplane, the Aviat Husky, will also be part of the display.