Bleriot Monoplane near Apperley Bridge.
On 22nd March 1910 this aircraft crashed at Apperley Bridge while being test flown. It was dismantled and placed in a small hanger on the site where a repair was begun. The tail and fuselage sections were hung from roofing rafters and were below the Gaunt Biplane No.1 that caught fire and exploded in the hanger on 27th April 1910. Damage to the Bleriot hanging above it occurred.
Mr Albert House and his son John House ran the Northern Aero Synicate company; John had built his own glider in 1905 and his father was reputed to have been the first motor car owner in Bradford. The pair owned a Bleriot aircraft which they initially flew from their home area of Apperley Bridge, Bradford in 1910. It was stored in a hanger at Airedale Aerodrome on Rawdon Meadow. John House had crashed the aircraft at Apperley Bridge on to attempt to win a prize offered for someone flying the two mile stretch of Filey beach to be awarded only to a person who had not previously won such a competition. The Bleriot then crashed again at Filey, believed to have been in late-July 1910. After suffering a number of mishaps at Filey in the summer of 1910 the Northern Aero Synicate company went into liquidation. John House is then believed to have joined forces with Mr Blackburn in buying a cottage on the cliff tops and assisting him at Filey with his flying activities. The photograph shown above is their hanger. Both photographs came to me via the late Albert Pritchard.
