Blackburn Mercury near Norton, Malton.

In the early days of popular flying in Yorkshire businessman Mr Stuart Hirst put up a £50 reward to be given to the first man to fly into Leeds on a Yorkshire-built aircraft. The pilot of this aircraft was attempting to do just this on Wednesday 29th May 1912. The aircraft was rolled out it's hanger at Filey at 06.00hrs and made a preliminary flight over the Filey sands, upon finding everything was alright the pilot set out at once. He was a well known local aviator in Filey and an experienced pilot. All went well on the opening section of his journey, he climbed to over 800 feet passing Staxton, Sherburn and Heslerton until he was four miles from Malton. Unfortunately he was forced to land his aircraft as the engine began to mis-fire over Rillington. At 07.10hrs he landed the aircraft in a cornfield owned by Mr C. Botterill at Norton Parks but one of the aircraft's struts was bent when the aircraft clipped the ground when avoiding a hedge. Motor cars had been following this attempt on the ground and were soon on the scene to repair the plane, a new strut was fitted at Norton and the aircraft attempted to take-off again at 16.00hrs the same day to continue the attempt at flying to Leeds, unfortunately a tyre burst and the take-off was not carried out. By 17.00hrs the tyre was repaired and it took off successfully and cleared Malton but a few minutes later the engine began to play up again so the pilot landed again on land near Star Cottage Farm, in Welham Park, only two miles from the first landing and called off the flight to Leeds for the day. The aircraft was taken apart and transported back to Filey by train. The photograph shown above is of the Blackburn Mercury at Malton on this date but it is unclear where the photograph was taken, ie after the first or the second of the landings.

Pilot - Mr John "Jack" Brereton.

Jack Brereton was born on 22nd July 1882 at Galway, Ireland. He learnt to fly at Brooklands and gained his Royal Aero Club aviator's certificate there on 19th September 1911 (Cert.No.136). This pilot had made a number of flights from Filey and had also given a demonstration flight at Malton Show. He was a flying instructor at Blackburn's flying school.