On Saturday 27th July, Nottingham City Airport at Tollerton celebrated the 95th Anniversary of the aerodrome being awarded its licence to operate in response to Sir Alan Cobham’s Municipal Aerodrome Campaign.
At the time, Cobham, a well-known and forward-thinking aviation pioneer sought potential destinations for Imperial Airways by visiting over ninety proposed sites around the UK in his ten-seater DH61 ‘Giant Moth’ G-AAEV between May and October 1929. This foresight led to Tollerton officially being opened the following year for the emerging civilian flying scene.
Bingham artist, Tim O’Brien was at the celebration to paint visiting aircraft, DH-87B Hornet Moth G-AHBM that was flown in specially by its owner, Paul Gliddon from Breighton Airfield in North Yorkshire.
Tim said, “I paint a lot of pictures with oil paints, but I enjoyed a change of media at Tollerton by getting back to sketching the biplane with watercolour and gouache. I have kept it in a very loose painting style as I only had just over an hour to paint the aircraft before it departed. But hopefully it captured the atmosphere of the day.”
Aware of the campaign group’s bid to save the airfield from closure, Tim kindly donated the painting to raise funds for the group to produce publicity material such as leaflets, stickers, T-Shirts and so on to raise awareness of the critical issues involved when the area is lost forever under the 4000 homes that are planned.
Barbara Pugh of Cropwell Bishop, bought the painting and said, “I was most fortunate to be the first to respond and as a result, I am now the proud owner of a unique, original, signed Tim O’Brien painting and at the same time have helped contribute to the fund.”
Tim added, “I am thrilled that Barbara now owns the painting as it is a small world indeed. It was only when I met Barbara and her husband Rod that she mentioned how several years ago I had interviewed her family member, Jozef Warchal for the 3rd edition of my book ‘Last Post at Newton, the history of RAF Newton’. Jozef had escaped Nazi occupied Europe and reached the UK where he flew with the Royal Air Force. Following a head injury after a Spitfire crash, he was assigned to the Flying Training School at RAF Newton as an instructor. Even though he was billeted at Newton, he flew from the satellite station at RAF Tollerton every day in a Harvard aircraft, training future fighter pilots.”
For more information about the campaign to save the aerodrome, please take a look at the group’s Facebook page at ‘Save Nottingham City (Tollerton) Airfield: EGBN’