Edwin Lutyens’s First and Only Aeroplane Flight – to Advise on Architectural Aspects of Greater London’s New Highways

By Richard Page

In 1935, Edwin Lutyens was appointed as consultant to Charles Bressey, Chief Engineer for Roads at the Ministry of Transport. Bressey had been tasked with producing a survey of highway developments required in the London Traffic Area for the next 30 years to keep pace with the expansion of traffic. This covered an area of 1,821sq miles, and Lutyens had been asked to advise on the architectural aspects of the proposals made.

The resulting Bressey-Lutyens Report on the Highway Development of Greater London was published in 1938. Notable suggestions included a tunnel under Hyde Park linking South Kensington to Paddington; numerous new roundabouts; a series of orbital roads; high-capacity motorways radiating out of London, and an “urgent” requirement to improve road access to aerodromes.

On the morning of 3 September, 1935, during the compilation of the report, Lutyens and Bressey travelled to Croydon, Britain’s first major international airport, to take a flight over London. Although Lutyens proved a nervous passenger, he was fascinated by the aerial views of the capital’s architecture.

Lutyens wrote to his wife, Emily: “I have TODAY been up in the air! I flew and have flown: fact. Gosh! How good to come home to earth. God seldom gave me greater pleasure to be au terre. Bressey called with a car and off we went to Croydon. We were weighed, with overcoat, pipes, tobacco, etc. I weigh 14 stone. Bressey short, thin, without pipes tobacco or overcoat weighed 12. So it was my spirits that were overweighting me. We went through ordinary official passages to emerge in a tar-covered space with one or two flying machines standing about, looking as though they knew nothing – saw nothing – the devils! We were given a two-winged puppet with only three engines, a cabin to hold four, like Four Queens in a pack the Deuce to play. It had a long window about 12in high, 3ft wide on each side. We had two officers, charming young men, apparently waiting for a spare daughter, but I had none to spare.”

Previously a First World War RAF airfield, Croydon Airport had become operational in 1920 as London’s airport and had been greatly enlarged by 1928 with new buildings, including Britain’s first airport terminal and air-traffic control tower. Various innovations in air-traffic control were developed here, including the international distress call, “Mayday”. The airport was a place of momentous historic events, record-breaking flights and the creation of Britain’s first national airline, Imperial Airways (later British Airways), which offered Britain’s first international flights. By 1935, the airport handled 49 per cent of all UK air passengers (120,390 in total).

Lutyens describes the flight in great detail: “We started off taxiing and then a roar began, with a bump or two and, the roar ever increasing, we left our – my own world and went up – up – up – I held on tight, and didn’t at all like the intermittent bumps, drops. The roar made conversation an uproar. We only had two wings, so as to get as big a viewscope down as was possible but the 2-side engines interrupted much.”

The aircraft was a Westland Wessex IV, a six-seat, tri-motor, high-wing, mainly wooden monoplane. Research from Historic Croydon Airport Trust suggests Bressey and Lutyens’s pilots would have worked for Olley Air Services. Gordon Olley, a First World War flying ace who had started his own airline in 1934, later became the world’s first pilot to log 1m miles. Lutyens continues to describe what he sees: “A river or a railroad.

“We did not go over 1,000ft. The first thing I really recognised, but could not believe it quite so small, was Hampton Court. My [Hampton Court] bridge from the air looks ever so much better than any other. Why?! I know but shan’t write it, but it was odd.” The bridge was a recent work, having been completed in 1933.

“Hatfield, North Mimms,” he also wrote. “The innumerable dwellings and developments you know at once whether a good architect or bad had been at work. Very refreshing knowing one was looking at things from what one might call God’s point of view. It was striking the amount of green, the amount of garden space allowed to the average buildings and the countless number of tennis courts. The first batch of cows I thought were chickens!

“It was all very interesting, perplexing, and made the world a difficult place to keep tidy and soigné. The simplicity of Hampton Court and it’s childlike planning surprised me.”

Hampton Court Palace was begun by Cardinal Wolsey in the early 16th century, but it is perhaps best known as the home of Henry VIII, who brought all six wives here. In 1689, when William and incorporated the old Tudor palace.

“The deliberate waywardness of all else was bewildering, the incoherent mass and undirected endeavour was the very last chapter of Revelations,” Lutyens noted. “We taxied down with a roundabout turn or two, when the world canted and all world on end one side and all sky the other brought one with a bump and a jolty run to safety, ie terra firma and I was very glad, but this is my first experience.”

According to Lutyens’s biographer Christopher Hussey, it was Lutyens’s first and only flight.

Richard Page, The Lutyens Trust’s property market specialist, is a former private pilot who has logged 100 hours.