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Every year, countless thousands of ordinary buildings are demolished. | 0:00:03 | 0:00:07 | |
Smashed down to make way for the new. | 0:00:07 | 0:00:11 | |
For many, this fate is unavoidable. | 0:00:11 | 0:00:14 | |
But some are so special they are saved. | 0:00:14 | 0:00:17 | |
Carefully taken down piece by piece. | 0:00:17 | 0:00:20 | |
Stored away until a new home for them can be found | 0:00:20 | 0:00:25 | |
and they can be lovingly and painstakingly rebuilt. | 0:00:25 | 0:00:28 | |
These are not grand buildings | 0:00:30 | 0:00:32 | |
or always exceptional pieces of architecture. | 0:00:32 | 0:00:36 | |
But preserved within the fabric are extraordinary stories. | 0:00:36 | 0:00:40 | |
Stories about who we are as a nation and what we have achieved. | 0:00:40 | 0:00:44 | |
About the materials and the techniques we use. | 0:00:44 | 0:00:47 | |
It's not as easy as it looks. | 0:00:47 | 0:00:48 | |
And about why we build the way we do. | 0:00:48 | 0:00:51 | |
It just feels like you're making it the way it should be made. | 0:00:51 | 0:00:54 | |
In this series, I'm going to uncover the hidden history behind these seemingly humble buildings | 0:00:54 | 0:01:00 | |
to reveal it's not just houses of the great and rich that have remarkable stories to tell. | 0:01:00 | 0:01:06 | |
My grandfather was probably the first airman to die in the First World War. | 0:01:06 | 0:01:10 | |
Goodness me! | 0:01:10 | 0:01:12 | |
While I'll be seeing how these huge, incredibly complex jigsaw puzzles | 0:01:12 | 0:01:16 | |
that were once buildings are actually put back together again. | 0:01:16 | 0:01:20 | |
At a site in Hendon on the outskirts of London, | 0:01:38 | 0:01:40 | |
getting on for 3,000 new homes are under construction. | 0:01:40 | 0:01:46 | |
But 100 years ago, this was the centre of one of the greatest revolutions in human transport. | 0:01:46 | 0:01:51 | |
It was here that the whole idea of modern air travel was born. | 0:01:54 | 0:01:58 | |
From 1911, this was where Britain's first air mail was despatched. | 0:02:03 | 0:02:08 | |
Where the first-ever airliners were built and tested. | 0:02:09 | 0:02:12 | |
And where some of the first fare paying passenger flights took off. | 0:02:13 | 0:02:17 | |
Three years later it became a home to a massive 50-acre aircraft production centre. | 0:02:19 | 0:02:25 | |
At the heart of this pioneering enterprise was this building. | 0:02:27 | 0:02:31 | |
Here were the offices | 0:02:33 | 0:02:34 | |
where the plans for Britain's first airliners and war planes were drawn. | 0:02:34 | 0:02:39 | |
And above them, a 360-degree aviation watchtower, | 0:02:39 | 0:02:45 | |
where the masterminds behind the operation | 0:02:45 | 0:02:47 | |
could see their new aircraft being tested and launched. | 0:02:47 | 0:02:50 | |
Forgotten and neglected for 20 years, this was all that remained | 0:02:57 | 0:03:01 | |
of one of Britain's first aviation buildings. | 0:03:01 | 0:03:04 | |
It was on the site of the new development but it was listed. | 0:03:05 | 0:03:10 | |
Recognising the building's importance, | 0:03:10 | 0:03:12 | |
English Heritage gave consent for it to be relocated. | 0:03:12 | 0:03:16 | |
So it was taken apart brick by brick, | 0:03:16 | 0:03:18 | |
and all the elements preserved until a new site could be found | 0:03:18 | 0:03:22 | |
when it could be pieced back together | 0:03:22 | 0:03:24 | |
and restored to its former glory. | 0:03:24 | 0:03:27 | |
And happily that day has come. | 0:03:27 | 0:03:30 | |
Thanks to the persistence of local people and planners, | 0:03:30 | 0:03:33 | |
the building is going to be brought back to life | 0:03:33 | 0:03:36 | |
at the Heart of Hendon where it belongs. | 0:03:36 | 0:03:39 | |
It's coming here to the RAF Museum | 0:03:39 | 0:03:43 | |
which occupies part of the original aerodrome. | 0:03:43 | 0:03:46 | |
And when here, the building will act as reminder of those days | 0:03:46 | 0:03:50 | |
when Britain led the world in the field of aviation. | 0:03:50 | 0:03:54 | |
'That iconic building has been dismantled | 0:03:56 | 0:03:58 | |
'and moved across the old aerodrome to the museum site | 0:03:58 | 0:04:02 | |
'and over the next nine months | 0:04:02 | 0:04:04 | |
'we'll see the enormous task involved in piecing it all back together. | 0:04:04 | 0:04:11 | |
'Property Developer Heston Atwell and Construction Engineer Derek Walsh | 0:04:11 | 0:04:15 | |
'can at last begin the job of reconstruction.' | 0:04:15 | 0:04:17 | |
-This is it. This is the entire building laid out. -Yes. -Yeah. | 0:04:18 | 0:04:22 | |
These are the features we managed to keep from the salvage operations. | 0:04:22 | 0:04:25 | |
There doesn't seem to be a lot of them. | 0:04:25 | 0:04:27 | |
This was a big building, wasn't it? | 0:04:27 | 0:04:29 | |
About 15,000 square feet but the ends were the only bits of interest, | 0:04:29 | 0:04:32 | |
the North and South elevation, so this is all for those two ends. | 0:04:32 | 0:04:37 | |
Photographs taken before it was demolished reveal that it was | 0:04:38 | 0:04:42 | |
a long narrow industrial shed. | 0:04:42 | 0:04:44 | |
But at either end, in its heyday, were two grand entrances. | 0:04:44 | 0:04:50 | |
Facing onto the road, it was only single storey, | 0:04:50 | 0:04:53 | |
but at the airfield end was a much more elaborate two storey structure, | 0:04:53 | 0:04:58 | |
with a viewing balcony fronted by a balustrade | 0:04:58 | 0:05:01 | |
and on top, what became the model for the world's airport watchtowers. | 0:05:01 | 0:05:05 | |
So have you got a big instruction book? | 0:05:08 | 0:05:11 | |
We do. We have a big set of plans that the architects have prepared. | 0:05:11 | 0:05:14 | |
-Everything goes back together according to this. -That's it. -OK. | 0:05:14 | 0:05:17 | |
That details the position of every single baluster, | 0:05:17 | 0:05:20 | |
every single piece of stone, every single pediment. | 0:05:20 | 0:05:22 | |
Well, it looks to me like you've got your work cut out | 0:05:22 | 0:05:27 | |
if this is going to be a building. | 0:05:27 | 0:05:30 | |
The job of cleaning all the pieces of this jigsaw is under way. | 0:05:32 | 0:05:36 | |
The foundations have been laid and the bricklayers have begun work. | 0:05:36 | 0:05:40 | |
Many of the old bricks were too damaged to be reused | 0:05:40 | 0:05:43 | |
so some new ones have been substituted. | 0:05:43 | 0:05:46 | |
In many ways, all buildings are like giant jigsaw puzzles | 0:05:46 | 0:05:51 | |
but where this one is special is that | 0:05:51 | 0:05:54 | |
half the pieces are missing or broken like this. | 0:05:54 | 0:05:58 | |
So what Heston, Derek and the team have got to do | 0:05:58 | 0:06:00 | |
is not only put together thousands of pieces in the right place, | 0:06:00 | 0:06:06 | |
they have to find the missing pieces, remake the moulds | 0:06:06 | 0:06:08 | |
to make the missing pieces. | 0:06:08 | 0:06:10 | |
Put that all together, | 0:06:10 | 0:06:11 | |
get the hundreds and thousands of pieces in the right place | 0:06:11 | 0:06:15 | |
and then make it look like a unified dignified whole. | 0:06:15 | 0:06:20 | |
It's an enormous challenge. | 0:06:20 | 0:06:22 | |
But an intriguing one. | 0:06:23 | 0:06:25 | |
To put this building back together, | 0:06:25 | 0:06:27 | |
you first have to enter the mind of the man who built it. | 0:06:27 | 0:06:31 | |
One of the great pioneers of air travel. | 0:06:31 | 0:06:34 | |
Airports seem commonplace today. | 0:06:41 | 0:06:43 | |
They're something we take for granted. | 0:06:43 | 0:06:47 | |
But 100 years ago, the idea that you could jump on an aeroplane | 0:06:47 | 0:06:51 | |
and fly to virtually anywhere in the world | 0:06:51 | 0:06:54 | |
had barely entered the realm of science fiction. | 0:06:54 | 0:06:58 | |
But for one visionary, flight opened up a world of possibilities. | 0:06:58 | 0:07:03 | |
The man with his eye on the future and an unbounded love of aircraft | 0:07:03 | 0:07:08 | |
was a flamboyant, wealthy car dealer called Claude Grahame-White. | 0:07:08 | 0:07:15 | |
He won a fortune in early flying competitions | 0:07:15 | 0:07:18 | |
but his sights were firmly fixed on something even more ambitious. | 0:07:18 | 0:07:22 | |
He was on a mission to inspire the nation | 0:07:22 | 0:07:24 | |
with his dream for the future of air travel. | 0:07:24 | 0:07:27 | |
People at that time regarded a flying machine as unlikely to | 0:07:28 | 0:07:33 | |
be in any way the future of transport. | 0:07:33 | 0:07:36 | |
I announced that I would take up seven passengers | 0:07:40 | 0:07:42 | |
in the Grahame-White flying Charabanc. | 0:07:42 | 0:07:45 | |
The flight was successfully made at Hendon, | 0:07:45 | 0:07:48 | |
not with seven but with nine passengers! | 0:07:48 | 0:07:51 | |
It's true that some passengers were simply perched on the wings. | 0:07:51 | 0:07:54 | |
There wasn't room for them all in the cockpit. | 0:07:54 | 0:07:58 | |
I believe that someday there will be airliners circling the globe. | 0:07:58 | 0:08:02 | |
Claude Grahame-White always envisaged that one day | 0:08:03 | 0:08:06 | |
there would be international airlines circling this very building. | 0:08:06 | 0:08:10 | |
It might not look like it today | 0:08:10 | 0:08:12 | |
but it was here that he nurtured his great dream of civil aviation. | 0:08:12 | 0:08:17 | |
'In the off-site carpentry shop, | 0:08:21 | 0:08:24 | |
'work is under way on the mammoth job of restoring the woodwork. | 0:08:24 | 0:08:27 | |
'Much of which was badly water damaged through decades of neglect.' | 0:08:27 | 0:08:32 | |
-So is this a new window then? -No, this is one of the originals. | 0:08:32 | 0:08:35 | |
'Master carpenter Ian Fortune and his team will have their work cut out | 0:08:35 | 0:08:39 | |
'patching up the existing pieces | 0:08:39 | 0:08:42 | |
'as well as replacing all those that have vanished or are beyond repair.' | 0:08:42 | 0:08:46 | |
So what's that? Is that the stairs? | 0:08:46 | 0:08:48 | |
That's part of the original staircase. | 0:08:48 | 0:08:50 | |
So that's all in oak? | 0:08:50 | 0:08:51 | |
That's all in oak and in a terrible state. | 0:08:51 | 0:08:53 | |
-Isn't it? -Yeah. -So that's going to be a big job. -It needs a lot of work. | 0:08:53 | 0:08:56 | |
And what's this? | 0:08:56 | 0:08:58 | |
That's part of the panelling that came out of Grahame-White's office. | 0:08:58 | 0:09:01 | |
Is it? Wow! So that was all panelled out? | 0:09:01 | 0:09:03 | |
It's something we've got to match at a later date. | 0:09:03 | 0:09:05 | |
And then this is quite a simple balustrade, isn't it? | 0:09:05 | 0:09:07 | |
It is quite a simple balustrade | 0:09:07 | 0:09:09 | |
when you consider the elaborateness of the staircase all in oak. | 0:09:09 | 0:09:13 | |
I suppose that shows its period, that Edwardian thing, | 0:09:13 | 0:09:16 | |
where they were starting to simplify. | 0:09:16 | 0:09:18 | |
The fancy work was disappearing. | 0:09:18 | 0:09:20 | |
At the end of the day, it was the work place, wasn't it? | 0:09:20 | 0:09:23 | |
What about this, talking of fancy work? Wow! | 0:09:23 | 0:09:26 | |
That's one of the feature windows off the balcony. | 0:09:26 | 0:09:28 | |
These are something else, aren't they? | 0:09:28 | 0:09:30 | |
There's quite a bit of work needed. | 0:09:30 | 0:09:32 | |
-So these would have looked out onto the airfield. -That's right. | 0:09:32 | 0:09:37 | |
Suddenly you get a sense of what this building was about. | 0:09:37 | 0:09:39 | |
It's like Newbury Racecourse. It's like Henley Regatta. | 0:09:39 | 0:09:43 | |
It's almost like a sporting event, isn't it? | 0:09:43 | 0:09:45 | |
So you start to understand that this building's really all about the spectacle of flight. | 0:09:45 | 0:09:50 | |
That's right. | 0:09:50 | 0:09:51 | |
In Claude Grahame-White's day | 0:09:55 | 0:09:57 | |
the spectacle of flight came to define Hendon. | 0:09:57 | 0:10:01 | |
In 1911, he transformed his airfield into a popular venue | 0:10:01 | 0:10:05 | |
for pioneering air races and aerial displays. | 0:10:05 | 0:10:10 | |
That legacy lives on today at The Shuttleworth Collection | 0:10:10 | 0:10:13 | |
in Old Warden. | 0:10:13 | 0:10:16 | |
Here daredevil pilots still loop the loop in fragile period planes | 0:10:16 | 0:10:21 | |
in the tradition of Grahame-White. | 0:10:21 | 0:10:24 | |
-GRAHAMEWHITE: -I had 20 or 30 pilots whom I trained in my flying school. | 0:10:24 | 0:10:28 | |
Some of them were rather daring characters, | 0:10:28 | 0:10:31 | |
eager to show of all sorts of aerial stunts. | 0:10:31 | 0:10:35 | |
'To a world that had witnessed the Wright brothers' first flight only eight years earlier, | 0:10:37 | 0:10:43 | |
'these aerial antics were as awesome as space travel is today. | 0:10:43 | 0:10:48 | |
'My guide to the daredevil, topsy-turvy experience Grahame-White | 0:10:48 | 0:10:54 | |
'called the "Hendon Habit" is aviation historian Josh Levine.' | 0:10:54 | 0:10:59 | |
It's probably difficult now for us to imagine the spectacle | 0:10:59 | 0:11:03 | |
that this would have been in 1911. | 0:11:03 | 0:11:05 | |
Absolutely unheard of, the idea of going up and flying through the air. | 0:11:05 | 0:11:11 | |
Thousands and thousands of people would come along to watch it. | 0:11:11 | 0:11:15 | |
Yes, so Hendon at that time was really the greatest show on earth. | 0:11:15 | 0:11:17 | |
Biggest show on earth. It was a circus. | 0:11:17 | 0:11:20 | |
It was absolutely the place to be. | 0:11:20 | 0:11:23 | |
It was Lords, it was London Zoo, it was Ascot, it was Henley. | 0:11:23 | 0:11:27 | |
It was glamour. | 0:11:27 | 0:11:28 | |
-GRAHAME-WHITE: -We also made the first parachute descent from an aeroplane in flight. | 0:11:30 | 0:11:34 | |
Mr Newell, the chap who dropped, | 0:11:36 | 0:11:38 | |
didn't have his parachute strapped on his back as they do nowadays, | 0:11:38 | 0:11:42 | |
but simply folded it up on his knee haphazard. | 0:11:42 | 0:11:46 | |
And at 3,000 feet, he was shoved off with a hefty kick from behind. | 0:11:46 | 0:11:51 | |
Very often people did crash and one pilot who flew for Grahame-White, | 0:11:53 | 0:11:59 | |
crashed at one of the displays. | 0:11:59 | 0:12:01 | |
He lost a leg. He fashioned a leg for himself. | 0:12:01 | 0:12:04 | |
He created his own false leg, | 0:12:04 | 0:12:06 | |
and three months later he was flying again. | 0:12:06 | 0:12:08 | |
That's the kind of people you had. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:10 | |
These were daredevils, you know. This was a new breed. | 0:12:10 | 0:12:13 | |
These airmen were great celebrities | 0:12:13 | 0:12:15 | |
and he himself, his waxwork was in Madame Tussauds. | 0:12:15 | 0:12:18 | |
-Incredible, yes, yes. -That is real fame. | 0:12:18 | 0:12:21 | |
But it wasn't all thrills and spills. | 0:12:23 | 0:12:25 | |
He was also keen to demonstrate how powered flight could be deployed | 0:12:25 | 0:12:29 | |
for military operations. | 0:12:29 | 0:12:32 | |
In May 1911, he staged Britain's first military air display, | 0:12:33 | 0:12:37 | |
inviting Winston Churchill and members of the defence ministry | 0:12:37 | 0:12:41 | |
to this very site in Hendon. | 0:12:41 | 0:12:44 | |
Oh, look at this. Grahame-White. | 0:12:47 | 0:12:48 | |
This was the central insignia, the Claude Grahame-White insignia. | 0:12:48 | 0:12:51 | |
-1915. So this was the centrepiece, was it? -Yeah, yeah. | 0:12:51 | 0:12:54 | |
And was this what you saw when you first arrived? | 0:12:56 | 0:12:58 | |
Above the entrance door, yeah. | 0:12:58 | 0:13:00 | |
So I see wings obviously for a plane. | 0:13:00 | 0:13:03 | |
He already had global ambitions. | 0:13:03 | 0:13:05 | |
'It's July, the forth month of the rebuild, | 0:13:05 | 0:13:08 | |
'and while the badge of Grahame-White's global ambitions | 0:13:08 | 0:13:11 | |
'has scrubbed up well, | 0:13:11 | 0:13:13 | |
'many of the other elements of the building have not. | 0:13:13 | 0:13:17 | |
'This is an increasing problem for Heston | 0:13:17 | 0:13:19 | |
'whose employers are funding the operation.' | 0:13:19 | 0:13:22 | |
It was a real poorly built, jerry build kind of building in 1914-15. | 0:13:22 | 0:13:25 | |
A lot of them we've shot with sort of frost action on them | 0:13:25 | 0:13:28 | |
and you can see there's layers and layers of paint over them. | 0:13:28 | 0:13:31 | |
Is it going to be quite a difficult job to reconstruct it | 0:13:31 | 0:13:36 | |
if all of the constituent parts are so badly aged? | 0:13:36 | 0:13:39 | |
It will be, yeah. | 0:13:39 | 0:13:40 | |
There's a lot of detail particularly with these heavy stones here | 0:13:40 | 0:13:43 | |
and how they were originally supported quite poorly from the first floor that was put through | 0:13:43 | 0:13:48 | |
so we're going to have a lot of fun in getting those put up properly. | 0:13:48 | 0:13:51 | |
-So very badly made? -Badly built, yeah. | 0:13:51 | 0:13:53 | |
No, this was put up rather quickly I think by an aviator not a builder. | 0:13:53 | 0:13:58 | |
But there was a good reason why this building had to be put up so quickly, | 0:14:02 | 0:14:07 | |
and the clue is in the date of completion - 1915. | 0:14:07 | 0:14:12 | |
The previous year had seen the outbreak of World War One. | 0:14:14 | 0:14:19 | |
The military thought this would be a war like any other. | 0:14:20 | 0:14:23 | |
But Grahame-White knew only too well | 0:14:23 | 0:14:27 | |
that new technologies were transforming the battlefield, | 0:14:27 | 0:14:29 | |
making it more brutal, more bloody and opening it up to the air. | 0:14:29 | 0:14:34 | |
Three years earlier he'd shown how planes could be used for reconnaissance and aerial bombing. | 0:14:35 | 0:14:41 | |
If Britain was to survive he would have to renew his campaign | 0:14:41 | 0:14:46 | |
to get the old guard to up to speed. | 0:14:46 | 0:14:48 | |
With great reluctance, he put his plans for civil aviation on hold, | 0:14:48 | 0:14:53 | |
handed his airfield over to the Admiralty | 0:14:53 | 0:14:56 | |
and set out to build a warplane factory. | 0:14:56 | 0:14:58 | |
In doing so, Claude Grahame-White faced another problem, | 0:15:04 | 0:15:07 | |
because the government had imposed wartime restrictions on the supply of building materials. | 0:15:07 | 0:15:12 | |
Not a man to be beaten, he got in his car | 0:15:12 | 0:15:15 | |
and travelled the country buying up timber and brick yards. | 0:15:15 | 0:15:18 | |
You can see here from the old brick created by hand around 1900 | 0:15:20 | 0:15:24 | |
and what they would have done is they would have made it up wet | 0:15:24 | 0:15:28 | |
and their fingerprints would be left in the brick from lifting it | 0:15:28 | 0:15:31 | |
so it would have been lifted and put into the oven. | 0:15:31 | 0:15:34 | |
The oven would have cooked the fingerprints in place | 0:15:34 | 0:15:36 | |
so it's marvellous to see something like that now. | 0:15:36 | 0:15:39 | |
You don't see that nowadays | 0:15:39 | 0:15:41 | |
cos machines have taken over, basically. | 0:15:41 | 0:15:45 | |
In the choice of bricks for this building | 0:15:45 | 0:15:47 | |
you get a sense of Claude, the great hustler. | 0:15:47 | 0:15:50 | |
Now, I would imagine a building like this, in this part of the world, | 0:15:50 | 0:15:53 | |
to be built of local materials which would mean London Stocks. | 0:15:53 | 0:15:57 | |
Hard wearing yellow bricks made from London clay. | 0:15:57 | 0:16:02 | |
But it wasn't. It was made of these soft reds. | 0:16:02 | 0:16:06 | |
Now these are made from Wealden Clay. | 0:16:06 | 0:16:08 | |
That's not a local clay, which means that Claude got all these bricks | 0:16:08 | 0:16:13 | |
from over 130 miles away during war time. | 0:16:13 | 0:16:18 | |
He had a tougher problem sourcing steel | 0:16:19 | 0:16:23 | |
because most of that was on its way to munitions factories. | 0:16:23 | 0:16:26 | |
So he purchased a fleet of lorries and by providing his own transport, | 0:16:26 | 0:16:31 | |
he swayed the northern ironmasters into parting with the steel I-beams | 0:16:31 | 0:16:36 | |
he needed to create this very modern steel structure. | 0:16:36 | 0:16:41 | |
The I-beam is a very clever piece of design and of structure. | 0:16:41 | 0:16:45 | |
This is the principles of why it works and why it's so clever. | 0:16:45 | 0:16:49 | |
If you take a ruler like this and imagine it's a beam and load it up, | 0:16:49 | 0:16:53 | |
it flexes quite easily. | 0:16:53 | 0:16:54 | |
But if you turn it on its edge like this it's incredibly stiff | 0:16:54 | 0:16:58 | |
and a lot stronger and that's the principle of the I-beam. | 0:16:58 | 0:17:02 | |
So an I-beam is a shape like this. | 0:17:02 | 0:17:07 | |
And what the thinking is, | 0:17:07 | 0:17:08 | |
is that all the work of the beam is done in the top and the bottom. | 0:17:08 | 0:17:13 | |
If you imagine this is a slice through a long beam like that. | 0:17:13 | 0:17:17 | |
If you imagine the amount of material to make a metre section of that, | 0:17:17 | 0:17:22 | |
is the same as to make a square beam, a square section like that. | 0:17:22 | 0:17:27 | |
So imagine these two are a metre long. | 0:17:27 | 0:17:29 | |
This one is 7.9 times stronger | 0:17:29 | 0:17:34 | |
and over 29 times stiffer. | 0:17:34 | 0:17:37 | |
So you're making the least amount of material possible | 0:17:37 | 0:17:40 | |
do the most amount of work. | 0:17:40 | 0:17:42 | |
You're optimising the structure. | 0:17:42 | 0:17:44 | |
I can imagine this would have really appealed to Grahame-White, | 0:17:44 | 0:17:48 | |
the engineer and aviator, because that is what planes are about. | 0:17:48 | 0:17:51 | |
it's about making them as light as possible and as strong as possible. | 0:17:51 | 0:17:55 | |
And the implications of optimisation of structure and the I-beam | 0:17:56 | 0:18:00 | |
has been as revolutionary for architecture | 0:18:00 | 0:18:03 | |
as powered flight has been for humanity. | 0:18:03 | 0:18:07 | |
'But having gone to such trouble to scavenge I-beams often used | 0:18:07 | 0:18:12 | |
'to build the latest skyscrapers, it seems odd that Grahame-White | 0:18:12 | 0:18:17 | |
'then created a building rooted in the past, not the future.' | 0:18:17 | 0:18:20 | |
It seems to me it's quite a mishmash. | 0:18:20 | 0:18:23 | |
It's so classical, it's so backward looking. | 0:18:23 | 0:18:25 | |
You'd imagine, aircraft, flights, modernity, | 0:18:25 | 0:18:31 | |
and this is Roman stuff. | 0:18:31 | 0:18:34 | |
'And alongside classical architraves and window surrounds | 0:18:34 | 0:18:37 | |
'we have Elizabethan-style bottle balustrades.' | 0:18:37 | 0:18:40 | |
To find out what was going on, | 0:18:42 | 0:18:44 | |
I'm visiting the architects who drew up the plans for the rebuild. | 0:18:44 | 0:18:48 | |
Their offices were designed around the same time. | 0:18:48 | 0:18:51 | |
Now this is a proper architects building, Voysey 1904. | 0:18:52 | 0:18:58 | |
Beautiful. | 0:18:58 | 0:19:00 | |
'With its modern styling this more the kind of thing | 0:19:00 | 0:19:03 | |
'I would have expected Grahame-White to go for. | 0:19:03 | 0:19:06 | |
'Hopefully, Anna and Wyndham will be able to tell me | 0:19:06 | 0:19:10 | |
'how he ended up with a retro building.' | 0:19:10 | 0:19:14 | |
What really I find fascinating and also slightly frustrating is | 0:19:14 | 0:19:19 | |
we're standing in a building here that's 1904, | 0:19:19 | 0:19:21 | |
that's 10 to 12 years earlier than this building, | 0:19:21 | 0:19:25 | |
yet this building is so much more modern and contemporary so we've gone backwards. | 0:19:25 | 0:19:29 | |
Well, as we approached the First World War | 0:19:29 | 0:19:31 | |
there seemed to be a sort of loss of nerve amongst architects | 0:19:31 | 0:19:36 | |
and they sort of reverted back to old styles. | 0:19:36 | 0:19:39 | |
Maybe Claude Grahame-White had the vision when it came to aeroplanes | 0:19:39 | 0:19:43 | |
but didn't know how to put it in terms of architectural styling. | 0:19:43 | 0:19:46 | |
Maybe people who were guiding him with the initial ideas | 0:19:46 | 0:19:48 | |
for the building weren't necessarily forward thinking either at the time. | 0:19:48 | 0:19:52 | |
It had the grandeur of historical context. | 0:19:52 | 0:19:56 | |
It demonstrated elegance and class, without actually screaming out | 0:19:56 | 0:20:01 | |
that he was trying to be controversial in any way. | 0:20:01 | 0:20:03 | |
Grahame-White was clearly a complex and interesting man. | 0:20:06 | 0:20:10 | |
I wanted to find out more from someone who knew him first hand. | 0:20:10 | 0:20:14 | |
I had hoped he might have a surviving relative | 0:20:14 | 0:20:17 | |
but it turns out he had no children, despite having had three wives. | 0:20:17 | 0:20:22 | |
-Hello, Richard. -Hello. -Very nice to meet you. -And you too. | 0:20:24 | 0:20:29 | |
'But the person I've come to meet at the British Library | 0:20:29 | 0:20:32 | |
is the next best thing. | 0:20:32 | 0:20:33 | |
Richard Gates, the grandson of Richard Thomas Gates. | 0:20:33 | 0:20:36 | |
Grandfather was the manager | 0:20:39 | 0:20:41 | |
and I think Claude Grahame-White was the entrepreneur. | 0:20:41 | 0:20:45 | |
And one of the small photographs I've got here, | 0:20:45 | 0:20:48 | |
that's Claude Grahame-White and my grandfather | 0:20:48 | 0:20:50 | |
in an aeroplane they bought. | 0:20:50 | 0:20:53 | |
They, both of them, and particularly Claude Grahame-White, as you see, | 0:20:53 | 0:20:57 | |
it's got "Wake Up England". | 0:20:57 | 0:20:59 | |
That was the big slogan, wasn't it? | 0:20:59 | 0:21:02 | |
They wanted people to realise that flying had a proper future. | 0:21:02 | 0:21:06 | |
Oh wow, a blueprint, a drawing, oh my goodness! | 0:21:06 | 0:21:09 | |
-Military bi-plane. -Oh lord, look at that. | 0:21:09 | 0:21:12 | |
So they are thinking in military terms. | 0:21:12 | 0:21:16 | |
Well, as you can see on the photo there. | 0:21:16 | 0:21:19 | |
But when the war starts late 1914 what happens then? | 0:21:19 | 0:21:23 | |
Your grandfather should be up there in the front, but what happens? | 0:21:23 | 0:21:26 | |
Well, both of them joined the Royal Naval Air Service. | 0:21:26 | 0:21:30 | |
And, of course, the Navy was slightly more go ahead than the army | 0:21:30 | 0:21:34 | |
because the army were still thinking in terms of cavalry | 0:21:34 | 0:21:39 | |
and what they then started to do out of Hendon Aerodrome, | 0:21:39 | 0:21:43 | |
was defend London. | 0:21:43 | 0:21:44 | |
They went up together because there was a Zeppelin warning | 0:21:44 | 0:21:49 | |
and landed safely at night | 0:21:49 | 0:21:51 | |
and about three or four days later there was another Zeppelin warning, | 0:21:51 | 0:21:55 | |
but Claude Grahame-White wasn't at the aerodrome at that time, | 0:21:55 | 0:21:59 | |
so grandfather went up on his own. | 0:21:59 | 0:22:02 | |
The aeroplane crashed. | 0:22:03 | 0:22:06 | |
I think my grandfather was the first airman to die in the First World War. | 0:22:06 | 0:22:11 | |
Goodness me. | 0:22:11 | 0:22:13 | |
'Grahame-White was devastated. | 0:22:13 | 0:22:15 | |
'He'd lost his co-pilot and company manager | 0:22:15 | 0:22:19 | |
'but it didn't deflect him from his mission to convince the military | 0:22:19 | 0:22:22 | |
'that aircraft could play a vital role in the war.' | 0:22:22 | 0:22:26 | |
His new headquarters at Hendon became a showcase for that ambition. | 0:22:27 | 0:22:32 | |
'Now the period features are going back in, | 0:22:34 | 0:22:36 | |
'I can at last understand what Grahame-White was up to | 0:22:36 | 0:22:40 | |
'with this the design of this building. | 0:22:40 | 0:22:43 | |
'It's a traditional facade disguising a modern internal structure.' | 0:22:43 | 0:22:47 | |
At last we're starting to see the shape of this building. | 0:22:48 | 0:22:51 | |
You can start to understand what makes it so important. | 0:22:51 | 0:22:54 | |
It's built in three sections. | 0:22:54 | 0:22:57 | |
The middle is a steel shed and at the back and at the front | 0:22:57 | 0:23:01 | |
you've got brick bits that make it look posh, | 0:23:01 | 0:23:04 | |
that make it seem much more important than it really is, much more special. | 0:23:04 | 0:23:08 | |
As you approached from the road you'd see this typical Georgian exterior | 0:23:10 | 0:23:14 | |
with its porthole windows and classical architrave. | 0:23:14 | 0:23:16 | |
On entry you'd find yourself in this smart brick-built vestibule. | 0:23:17 | 0:23:21 | |
But beyond that, the working body of the building | 0:23:21 | 0:23:24 | |
consisted of a modern, unadorned and highly versatile steel structure. | 0:23:24 | 0:23:29 | |
But this was always hidden. | 0:23:29 | 0:23:31 | |
At the airfield end of the building, was a two-storey brick-built section. | 0:23:31 | 0:23:36 | |
Its facade laden with architectural details | 0:23:36 | 0:23:39 | |
straight out of the style book of old England. | 0:23:39 | 0:23:42 | |
It's an all fur coat and no knickers approach to building | 0:23:44 | 0:23:48 | |
which is so ubiquitous today. | 0:23:48 | 0:23:50 | |
It's in all those out of town shopping centres, those office buildings, those call centres. | 0:23:50 | 0:23:55 | |
But in 1915, this was revolutionary. | 0:23:55 | 0:23:58 | |
Grahame-White's architectural facades were, I suspect, | 0:24:01 | 0:24:05 | |
part of his strategy to get the old school military authorities | 0:24:05 | 0:24:09 | |
on board with the new technology. | 0:24:09 | 0:24:11 | |
By 1916, they'd finally woken up to the fact | 0:24:14 | 0:24:17 | |
that aircraft had changed the rules of warfare forever. | 0:24:17 | 0:24:21 | |
Each side was now engaged in a technological race | 0:24:21 | 0:24:26 | |
to produce, better and ever more deadly fighting machines. | 0:24:26 | 0:24:28 | |
Many followed Grahame-White's example | 0:24:30 | 0:24:32 | |
and Hendon became an important centre | 0:24:32 | 0:24:35 | |
for the manufacture of aircraft and aircraft components. | 0:24:35 | 0:24:39 | |
95 years on, it's little wonder the RAF Museum is pleased | 0:24:41 | 0:24:45 | |
to have the great man's headquarters and watchtower | 0:24:45 | 0:24:48 | |
rebuilt on the Hendon site alongside his one remaining factory building. | 0:24:48 | 0:24:52 | |
The museum's gearing up to take over the reconstructed watchtower. | 0:24:54 | 0:24:58 | |
What will you do with it? | 0:24:58 | 0:25:00 | |
'I'm meeting the Director General of the museum, | 0:25:00 | 0:25:02 | |
'Air Vice Marshall Peter Dye.' | 0:25:02 | 0:25:04 | |
Well, it will allow us, together with this building, | 0:25:04 | 0:25:07 | |
the Grahame-White factory, to tell the story of Grahame-White | 0:25:07 | 0:25:10 | |
and his efforts here in the First World War. | 0:25:10 | 0:25:13 | |
We intend to punch through the wall where the watchtower is | 0:25:13 | 0:25:16 | |
and then we'll have a much larger space which will be focused on | 0:25:16 | 0:25:20 | |
the early history of aviation here and Grahame-White himself. | 0:25:20 | 0:25:23 | |
This means that Claude Grahame-White will at last get his due. | 0:25:23 | 0:25:27 | |
He is of course one of the world's greatest pioneers of aviation | 0:25:27 | 0:25:30 | |
but he's not very well known, why? | 0:25:30 | 0:25:32 | |
No, he isn't, and that's something that we intend to put right. | 0:25:32 | 0:25:37 | |
He was a leading figure in British aviation before the First World War. | 0:25:37 | 0:25:41 | |
He was seen as a hero. | 0:25:41 | 0:25:43 | |
He was as well known as Yuri Gagarin in his day | 0:25:43 | 0:25:46 | |
but he was also a great propagandist. | 0:25:46 | 0:25:49 | |
He was a bit like Richard Branson. | 0:25:49 | 0:25:50 | |
He was seen as pushing the boundaries, | 0:25:50 | 0:25:52 | |
and then he was also a great persuader, a great lobbyist. | 0:25:52 | 0:25:57 | |
He was the Jamie Oliver of aviation. | 0:25:57 | 0:25:59 | |
He was determined to make people change their mind. | 0:25:59 | 0:26:03 | |
He was determined to influence politicians to ensure that they saw the value of aviation. | 0:26:03 | 0:26:07 | |
This building we're in, this wonderful building, | 0:26:07 | 0:26:11 | |
dates from Claude Grahame-White's time as part of his factory. | 0:26:11 | 0:26:15 | |
-But what actually happened here? -Yes, this was built in war time. | 0:26:15 | 0:26:18 | |
This is where aircraft were build and in the watchtower alongside us | 0:26:18 | 0:26:21 | |
was a drawing office where a lot of the plans were produced. | 0:26:21 | 0:26:24 | |
During the course of the war some 2,000 aircraft were built here | 0:26:24 | 0:26:28 | |
to help win the war. | 0:26:28 | 0:26:29 | |
'Grahame-White was meticulous in the way he built aircraft. | 0:26:29 | 0:26:34 | |
'He was equally scrupulous in his treatment of his employees. | 0:26:34 | 0:26:37 | |
'Unlike so many wartime factories, his were clean, efficient, | 0:26:39 | 0:26:42 | |
'well ventilated and well lit. | 0:26:42 | 0:26:45 | |
'He made a point of welcoming women to the factory floor | 0:26:47 | 0:26:51 | |
'and boasted that he could rely on them to perform well | 0:26:51 | 0:26:54 | |
'in the male preserves of welding and woodwork.' | 0:26:54 | 0:26:57 | |
Sleeping cubicles were provided for those who had transport problems. | 0:26:59 | 0:27:04 | |
The work was hard and times were tough | 0:27:06 | 0:27:09 | |
but he but made sure there were regular outings and sports events. | 0:27:09 | 0:27:15 | |
And here we have another Grahame White architectural innovation. | 0:27:16 | 0:27:21 | |
His dual purpose aircraft hangar cum staff tennis court. | 0:27:21 | 0:27:27 | |
At the start of the war he employed just 70 people. | 0:27:27 | 0:27:31 | |
By 1915 that number had swelled to over 1,000 | 0:27:31 | 0:27:35 | |
and by the time this photograph was taken in 1917, | 0:27:35 | 0:27:39 | |
he had over 3,000 fully trained up, happy factory workers. | 0:27:39 | 0:27:45 | |
And where are they standing? In front of our building. | 0:27:45 | 0:27:49 | |
'It's October, eight months into the reconstruction of the building, | 0:27:53 | 0:27:58 | |
'and things have come on a long way since my last visit.' | 0:27:58 | 0:28:02 | |
-Hello, Derek. -Hello, Charlie. How are you? -How are you? | 0:28:02 | 0:28:04 | |
-Not a bother now, not a bother. -That is a building. -It is indeed. | 0:28:04 | 0:28:08 | |
-It's finally come together. -Shall we have a look around then? | 0:28:08 | 0:28:12 | |
Go on, show me your handy work. | 0:28:12 | 0:28:14 | |
-Wow, it's really coming on. -We have our original steel trusses here. | 0:28:14 | 0:28:18 | |
That's amazing, all this original steelwork is more than 100 years old | 0:28:18 | 0:28:21 | |
and it feels as though it could have been made last week. | 0:28:21 | 0:28:25 | |
'At last the moment has come when the iconic part of the building | 0:28:27 | 0:28:31 | |
'is flown back into position. | 0:28:31 | 0:28:32 | |
'The Crowning pinnacle of Grahame-White's HQ, | 0:28:34 | 0:28:36 | |
'the great man's watchtower.' | 0:28:36 | 0:28:40 | |
So do you think it's going to fit? | 0:28:41 | 0:28:44 | |
-Well, it's an extremely nervous moment for me. -I bet it is! | 0:28:44 | 0:28:47 | |
-I have my fingers crossed. -How many times have you measured it? | 0:28:47 | 0:28:51 | |
Four times. | 0:28:51 | 0:28:52 | |
The reason Derek is nervous is that the watchtower's corner posts | 0:28:56 | 0:29:01 | |
must fit exactly into four supporting steel shoes | 0:29:01 | 0:29:05 | |
which have already been concreted into the building. | 0:29:05 | 0:29:08 | |
It's a very big moment for us, Charlie. | 0:29:15 | 0:29:17 | |
It's going to be a very significant part of the building now. | 0:29:17 | 0:29:20 | |
From a distance you're going to see it from the north elevation. | 0:29:20 | 0:29:22 | |
You're going to see it when you're walking up. | 0:29:22 | 0:29:25 | |
It's sort of the pinnacle of the external structure. | 0:29:25 | 0:29:28 | |
'The watchtower is now firmly in place, but what was its purpose?' | 0:29:28 | 0:29:33 | |
So what do you think the watchtower was for? | 0:29:33 | 0:29:35 | |
We just think it was there for show really. | 0:29:35 | 0:29:37 | |
There's no actual functionality to it whatsoever. | 0:29:37 | 0:29:39 | |
We guessed that from looking at the original building. No use to it. | 0:29:39 | 0:29:42 | |
Just a folly, really, I think. | 0:29:42 | 0:29:44 | |
'But was it just a folly | 0:29:44 | 0:29:47 | |
'or did Grahame-White have something else in mind for his watchtower? | 0:29:47 | 0:29:50 | |
'Did it have a function or was it simply for him to cast an eye over | 0:29:51 | 0:29:55 | |
'the aviation empire he'd created?' | 0:29:55 | 0:29:58 | |
Evidence of this empire can still be found all around Hendon today. | 0:30:02 | 0:30:09 | |
And it's not just the street names, parts of the factory still remain. | 0:30:09 | 0:30:15 | |
I'm standing on Aerodrome Road | 0:30:15 | 0:30:18 | |
which ran right through the centre of the factory. | 0:30:18 | 0:30:23 | |
Indeed standing here during the war looking in that direction, | 0:30:23 | 0:30:27 | |
there would be factory buildings on either side of the road | 0:30:27 | 0:30:31 | |
as far as the eye could see. | 0:30:31 | 0:30:33 | |
I know over there, | 0:30:33 | 0:30:34 | |
just to my left was the work's canteen, | 0:30:34 | 0:30:39 | |
which had a welfare facility | 0:30:39 | 0:30:42 | |
organised by Winston Churchill's wife - very impressive! | 0:30:42 | 0:30:46 | |
Few of the buildings survive, though there in front of me on the left, | 0:30:46 | 0:30:52 | |
is a building that appears to date from the time of Grahame White. | 0:30:52 | 0:30:56 | |
'According to my plan, this charming building was once the site of a garage | 0:30:58 | 0:31:03 | |
'with workers' sleeping cubicles on the floor above.' | 0:31:03 | 0:31:06 | |
Golly, it is one of the original factory buildings. There it is. | 0:31:08 | 0:31:12 | |
Two stories, mansard roof and the wide opening now bricked up. | 0:31:12 | 0:31:17 | |
And beyond it stood what was originally the wood store. | 0:31:17 | 0:31:23 | |
Look at the charming double pitched Georgian-style mansard roof, | 0:31:23 | 0:31:26 | |
the chimney stacks, the cupola, the lovely brickwork. | 0:31:26 | 0:31:30 | |
A wonderful piece of vernacular classical architecture. | 0:31:30 | 0:31:33 | |
But originally it didn't stand alone as now, | 0:31:33 | 0:31:36 | |
but formed the front to a whole range of factory buildings. | 0:31:36 | 0:31:41 | |
If you look at this picture, you can see - | 0:31:43 | 0:31:45 | |
rather like Grahame White HQ - the brick part was | 0:31:45 | 0:31:48 | |
a disguise for the modern industrial buildings behind. | 0:31:48 | 0:31:52 | |
What I love about Grahame White is that at the time | 0:31:53 | 0:31:56 | |
when the world was in turmoil, he created a modern factory that | 0:31:56 | 0:32:01 | |
was not monstrous and industrial in feel, but in it's forms | 0:32:01 | 0:32:05 | |
and details as comfortable and cosy as an English country village. | 0:32:05 | 0:32:10 | |
A walk up Aerodrome Road to what was the heart of his factory | 0:32:12 | 0:32:16 | |
brings us to another charming outpost of Grahame White's vision of England. | 0:32:16 | 0:32:20 | |
Where I'm standing now was the site of the tea room | 0:32:23 | 0:32:26 | |
and the starting point of the famous aerial races... | 0:32:26 | 0:32:28 | |
but during the First World this happened - | 0:32:28 | 0:32:31 | |
the tea room was rebuilt in a splendid neo Tudor Manor dated 1917. | 0:32:31 | 0:32:39 | |
Wonderful building, very well preserved. | 0:32:39 | 0:32:42 | |
The interior is also in neo Tudor/Jacobean style, | 0:32:42 | 0:32:46 | |
I love this staircase, wonderful thing. | 0:32:46 | 0:32:49 | |
I suppose this historical style does appear to be | 0:32:49 | 0:32:52 | |
in strange contrast to Grahame White's business | 0:32:52 | 0:32:55 | |
as a designer of futuristic aeroplane, very much cutting edge technology. | 0:32:55 | 0:33:00 | |
But this was the fashion of the time and more to the point I think, | 0:33:00 | 0:33:04 | |
he would have felt this architecture offered a sense of solidity. | 0:33:04 | 0:33:07 | |
This was important at a time when the world was changing fast | 0:33:11 | 0:33:16 | |
and people needed something quintessentially British to hold on to. | 0:33:16 | 0:33:20 | |
None more so than the young pilots, some just 17, | 0:33:23 | 0:33:26 | |
who'd left home to come to Grahame White's flying school at Hendon | 0:33:26 | 0:33:31 | |
to face the perils of aerial training... | 0:33:31 | 0:33:35 | |
It was a risky undertaking... | 0:33:35 | 0:33:38 | |
Of the 14,000 pilot casualties of World War One, | 0:33:39 | 0:33:44 | |
a large percentage occurred while they were still at flying school. | 0:33:44 | 0:33:48 | |
Many would have known this building because it became the Officers' Mess. | 0:33:50 | 0:33:55 | |
There are 6 weeks to go before Grahame White's HQ | 0:34:01 | 0:34:05 | |
and watchtower have to be handed over to the RAF Museum, | 0:34:05 | 0:34:10 | |
and there's still a lot to do... | 0:34:10 | 0:34:12 | |
Replicating all the original "quirks" | 0:34:12 | 0:34:16 | |
or dare I say "faults" has been a hugely time consuming process... | 0:34:16 | 0:34:20 | |
Though I have to admire the loving care and attention with which it's being done. | 0:34:20 | 0:34:25 | |
-So your brickwork's looking good, isn't it? -Yeah, it's coming on very well. | 0:34:25 | 0:34:28 | |
We're delighted with it, how it's turned out. | 0:34:28 | 0:34:30 | |
This is normal Flemish bond isn't it? So, long-short, | 0:34:30 | 0:34:34 | |
long, and here it goes short-short-short. | 0:34:34 | 0:34:36 | |
-You've got real clusters of shorts, haven't you? -Yeah. -It's quite unusual. | 0:34:36 | 0:34:39 | |
Yep, it adds a nice bit of quirkiness to this terrace level. | 0:34:39 | 0:34:44 | |
-And that was like that on the original building. -It was and we've created it brick from brick. | 0:34:44 | 0:34:49 | |
Nice. Why do you think they did that? | 0:34:49 | 0:34:52 | |
It's very, very hard to know, Charlie. | 0:34:52 | 0:34:54 | |
Possibly they had a load of half bricks instead of full bricks | 0:34:54 | 0:34:59 | |
and they just decided to integrate it into the building. | 0:34:59 | 0:35:02 | |
Who knows, maybe there was a shortage of supplies during the war. | 0:35:02 | 0:35:06 | |
-Either that or a very artistic bricklayer. -Well, yes. Who knows? | 0:35:06 | 0:35:09 | |
We'll never know... | 0:35:09 | 0:35:11 | |
But it's not only the brickwork that's beginning to reveal its quirks. | 0:35:14 | 0:35:17 | |
Everywhere the builders turn they discover puzzling irregularities. | 0:35:17 | 0:35:21 | |
Wow! 'The old grandstand windows I saw back at the beginning | 0:35:21 | 0:35:25 | |
'have now been fully restored | 0:35:25 | 0:35:27 | |
'and are ready to go back in place.' | 0:35:27 | 0:35:30 | |
So these are the ones that we saw in a terrible state. | 0:35:30 | 0:35:33 | |
-How much have you managed to salvage from them? -Nearly all of it. | 0:35:33 | 0:35:36 | |
A good 80% of the frame remains. | 0:35:36 | 0:35:38 | |
'But there's a bit of strangeness here - one doesn't match the others.' | 0:35:38 | 0:35:43 | |
-So this is leaded lights going in? But they're not, are they? -No. | 0:35:43 | 0:35:46 | |
-So what happened there? -I don't know. | 0:35:46 | 0:35:49 | |
'And now it's the turn of the original oak staircase. | 0:35:49 | 0:35:53 | |
'It, too, has had the benefit of months of painstaking restoration. | 0:35:53 | 0:35:57 | |
'But here we have a serious problem.' | 0:35:57 | 0:36:01 | |
-The housing's too tight. -I wonder if the bottom of the housing here... | 0:36:01 | 0:36:05 | |
-We'll take a bit more out there. -And a bit off here. | 0:36:05 | 0:36:07 | |
Put simply, Ian's stairs don't fit. | 0:36:07 | 0:36:10 | |
The old building wasn't as straight as it should have been. | 0:36:10 | 0:36:13 | |
There was a lot of hand work done, | 0:36:13 | 0:36:15 | |
it could have been made on-site to the shape of the building. | 0:36:15 | 0:36:18 | |
We've had trouble fitting it in the new building, | 0:36:18 | 0:36:20 | |
because the new building's square and plum. | 0:36:20 | 0:36:22 | |
So the entire staircase was made on the wonk | 0:36:22 | 0:36:25 | |
because the original building was on the wonk, | 0:36:25 | 0:36:28 | |
so you had to sort of shufty it over to get it fitting in. | 0:36:28 | 0:36:31 | |
A round plug in a square hole, really, that's the only way to explain it. | 0:36:31 | 0:36:35 | |
We could have replaced the whole staircase, | 0:36:35 | 0:36:37 | |
state, but I think the job was really to retain the history of the building, | 0:36:37 | 0:36:41 | |
so that you can see the staircase is old, see the wear on it. | 0:36:41 | 0:36:45 | |
The fact the stairs are on the skew has revealed something I really hadn't expected - | 0:36:48 | 0:36:53 | |
The watchtower, the crowning pinnacle of this building, | 0:36:53 | 0:36:57 | |
is actually way off centre. | 0:36:57 | 0:37:00 | |
You could blame the war. It wasn't a good time for building. | 0:37:01 | 0:37:05 | |
Most of the nation's architects had been drafted | 0:37:05 | 0:37:07 | |
into the engineering services, and the youngest and best | 0:37:07 | 0:37:11 | |
of Britain's labour force were fighting on the Western front. | 0:37:11 | 0:37:15 | |
But in my efforts to establish who was responsible | 0:37:15 | 0:37:18 | |
for the idiosyncrasies of Grahame-White's building, | 0:37:18 | 0:37:21 | |
I've made a rather interesting discovery. | 0:37:21 | 0:37:24 | |
And it comes from a magazine called Flight, | 0:37:24 | 0:37:26 | |
and it's the edition from August, 1917. | 0:37:26 | 0:37:30 | |
And there is a headline here that says, | 0:37:30 | 0:37:33 | |
"Alien Enemies At Aerodrome" and it's by a Mr George Faber, | 0:37:33 | 0:37:36 | |
and he asks the Undersecretary for War whether German prisoners | 0:37:36 | 0:37:40 | |
had been used at the Hendon aerodrome, and he replied that | 0:37:40 | 0:37:45 | |
"The employment of German prisoners in the construction of aerodromes | 0:37:45 | 0:37:48 | |
"and sheds and the enlargement of existing establishments | 0:37:48 | 0:37:52 | |
"had been found necessary in order not to delay the completion of urgent services." | 0:37:52 | 0:37:56 | |
I think, in a very roundabout way, he's saying yes, | 0:37:56 | 0:38:01 | |
that German prisoners of war are here at Hendon building stuff. | 0:38:01 | 0:38:06 | |
Now, I think we can't assume from that that POWs worked on our watchtower, | 0:38:06 | 0:38:12 | |
because the date on the front of the building is earlier, | 0:38:12 | 0:38:15 | |
but I think it shows you how much pressure Grahame-White | 0:38:15 | 0:38:20 | |
must have been under to expand his operation, to build more planes. | 0:38:20 | 0:38:24 | |
And what a disorientating experience for him, | 0:38:24 | 0:38:28 | |
because he was building things to kill Germans all day, basically, | 0:38:28 | 0:38:32 | |
and then coming outside and seeing groups of them | 0:38:32 | 0:38:35 | |
building his roads and expanding his empire, building his buildings. | 0:38:35 | 0:38:40 | |
As our building nears completion, | 0:38:51 | 0:38:53 | |
I finally managed to track down someone who has a direct link to it. | 0:38:53 | 0:38:57 | |
Ken Pattinson grew up in Hendon. | 0:38:58 | 0:39:00 | |
-Ah, Mr Pattinson, how very nice to meet you in the flesh. -Yes. | 0:39:02 | 0:39:07 | |
'He remembers having not one but two close relatives | 0:39:07 | 0:39:10 | |
'working in the Grahame-White factory during World War I.' | 0:39:10 | 0:39:13 | |
So, there's this wonderful family album of all sorts of bits and pieces here. | 0:39:13 | 0:39:17 | |
Your father, pride of place in the front. | 0:39:17 | 0:39:20 | |
His sister, May. | 0:39:20 | 0:39:22 | |
-Very strong, characterful face. -She worked as a fabricker. | 0:39:22 | 0:39:27 | |
She stitched the fabric around the fuselages of the plane, | 0:39:27 | 0:39:30 | |
because they were wood with fabric. | 0:39:30 | 0:39:33 | |
But I believe the effect of the doping, | 0:39:33 | 0:39:37 | |
which went on afterwards, made her ill. | 0:39:37 | 0:39:40 | |
'Dope was a varnish applied to the aircraft's fabric | 0:39:40 | 0:39:43 | |
'to make its stiff and waterproof, but it was dangerous stuff. | 0:39:43 | 0:39:46 | |
'Fumes from the solvent were known to be highly toxic.' | 0:39:46 | 0:39:51 | |
So, the dope, the varnish affected her health. | 0:39:51 | 0:39:54 | |
And she never really recovered, then? | 0:39:54 | 0:39:56 | |
She did, more or less, but she could never have children. | 0:39:56 | 0:39:59 | |
Now, whether that was any result of that, I don't know, | 0:39:59 | 0:40:04 | |
but they never had any children. | 0:40:04 | 0:40:06 | |
Hang on, I feel I've seen her before because she's so... | 0:40:06 | 0:40:11 | |
strong-armed as you, partly, but, no, honestly... | 0:40:11 | 0:40:14 | |
Hang on, see what you think. Look at this - where is it? | 0:40:14 | 0:40:18 | |
Ah, here we are. | 0:40:18 | 0:40:21 | |
Um... Look, what about that? | 0:40:21 | 0:40:24 | |
Is that not your...? Surely that's your aunt? | 0:40:26 | 0:40:29 | |
You haven't seen this picture before? | 0:40:31 | 0:40:33 | |
I haven't seen that picture before, no. | 0:40:33 | 0:40:36 | |
-And do you think that's your aunt? -That's most peculiar, isn't it? | 0:40:36 | 0:40:39 | |
Her eyes... | 0:40:39 | 0:40:41 | |
-They're the same, aren't they? -They are, they are the same. | 0:40:42 | 0:40:45 | |
-And, indeed, the hair, to a degree. -Yes. | 0:40:45 | 0:40:48 | |
But she's here, apparently in the drawing office. | 0:40:50 | 0:40:54 | |
'There she is, sitting in the very drawing office | 0:40:54 | 0:40:57 | |
'in Grahame-White's HQ that we are rebuilding. | 0:40:57 | 0:41:02 | |
'But she's not the only one of Ken Pattinson's relatives | 0:41:02 | 0:41:05 | |
'who was busy working in the factory during the First World War.' | 0:41:05 | 0:41:09 | |
So what else do we have? Ah. | 0:41:09 | 0:41:11 | |
That was my dad, who used to work for a Grahame-White. | 0:41:11 | 0:41:14 | |
There he is, looking very dapper. | 0:41:14 | 0:41:15 | |
He left school and he went as an apprentice | 0:41:15 | 0:41:19 | |
to the Grahame-White Company as an engine fitter-cum-door maker. | 0:41:19 | 0:41:23 | |
What did your father think of Claude Grahame-White as an employer? | 0:41:23 | 0:41:28 | |
I think he respected him, | 0:41:28 | 0:41:30 | |
and what he respected most was that he wanted perfection. | 0:41:30 | 0:41:34 | |
My father was like that, | 0:41:34 | 0:41:36 | |
and he learned that from Grahame-White, I'm sure of that. | 0:41:36 | 0:41:39 | |
'In the light of what I'd just been told, | 0:41:39 | 0:41:41 | |
'I was saddened to read a letter he then showed me | 0:41:41 | 0:41:44 | |
'in which Pattinson Senior was clearly being laid off.' | 0:41:44 | 0:41:48 | |
"Owing to the approaching termination of the existing contract | 0:41:50 | 0:41:54 | |
"placed by the Ministry of Munitions with us, the management regret | 0:41:54 | 0:41:58 | |
"that it is necessary to reduce the hands in some of the departments. | 0:41:58 | 0:42:02 | |
"We therefore regret having to dispense with your services." | 0:42:02 | 0:42:05 | |
So, he's being made redundant. | 0:42:05 | 0:42:07 | |
'It's clear from the letter that Grahame-White | 0:42:08 | 0:42:10 | |
'was forced to lay off staff because of government miscalculations.' | 0:42:10 | 0:42:14 | |
Initially having taken too long to engage with the war in the air, | 0:42:16 | 0:42:21 | |
the Ministry of Supply then ordered more planes than it needed. | 0:42:21 | 0:42:25 | |
But orders were now being cancelled | 0:42:25 | 0:42:27 | |
and manufacturers instructed to destroy existing stock. | 0:42:27 | 0:42:33 | |
Compensation was not always forthcoming. | 0:42:33 | 0:42:36 | |
It was a bad time to be in aviation. | 0:42:36 | 0:42:39 | |
And now that work has finally started | 0:42:41 | 0:42:44 | |
on the interior of Grahame-White's HQ, | 0:42:44 | 0:42:46 | |
I can begin to imagine the great man | 0:42:46 | 0:42:49 | |
anxiously pacing around this building. | 0:42:49 | 0:42:52 | |
There's now only a month before the handover. | 0:42:52 | 0:42:55 | |
The windows are in and the building is waterproof, | 0:42:55 | 0:42:59 | |
and, at last, master carpenter Ian | 0:42:59 | 0:43:01 | |
can get to work on Grahame-White's office. | 0:43:01 | 0:43:04 | |
I mean, all the panelling here looks totally new. | 0:43:04 | 0:43:06 | |
Yeah, there's none of the old retained. | 0:43:06 | 0:43:08 | |
There was one door that was plastered into the wall, which | 0:43:08 | 0:43:11 | |
is probably where they got all these details from, the moulding details. | 0:43:11 | 0:43:15 | |
'Restoring the oak panelling with nothing more to go on than | 0:43:15 | 0:43:19 | |
'one hidden door and this photo has clearly been a challenge.' | 0:43:19 | 0:43:22 | |
I mean, if you look at the wall, | 0:43:22 | 0:43:24 | |
it looks like it hasn't been set out properly, | 0:43:24 | 0:43:26 | |
cos the modules the panels are different sizes, | 0:43:26 | 0:43:28 | |
under the windows are larger than here. | 0:43:28 | 0:43:30 | |
That says to me that the panelling is a total afterthought. | 0:43:30 | 0:43:36 | |
-Maybe, maybe it is. -It's kind of weird, | 0:43:36 | 0:43:38 | |
and you've obviously replicated all of these mistakes. | 0:43:38 | 0:43:41 | |
Yes, as much as we can, yeah. | 0:43:41 | 0:43:43 | |
Does that slightly go against the grain? | 0:43:43 | 0:43:46 | |
Oh, no, we find that bit easy! | 0:43:46 | 0:43:47 | |
As virtually nothing remained of the original grand interior, | 0:43:49 | 0:43:53 | |
the architects have had to reconstruct every aspect of it from scratch. | 0:43:53 | 0:43:58 | |
Not an easy task when nothing about this building quite adds up. | 0:43:58 | 0:44:02 | |
'While the final touches are being applied to the building, | 0:44:05 | 0:44:09 | |
'I've just made an unexpected find. | 0:44:09 | 0:44:11 | |
'These papers originally came from Grahame-White's office, | 0:44:11 | 0:44:15 | |
'and I have to say, they have a rather shocking tale to tell.' | 0:44:15 | 0:44:19 | |
When I started this research I expected to find, | 0:44:22 | 0:44:25 | |
amongst other things, I suppose, a list of the honours awarded | 0:44:25 | 0:44:30 | |
to Grahame-White, but a rather different, sadder story has emerged. | 0:44:30 | 0:44:35 | |
While he offered advice, informed advice, to the government about | 0:44:35 | 0:44:39 | |
how to conduct the war in the air, how to manufacture aeroplanes, | 0:44:39 | 0:44:43 | |
he was met, increasingly and consistently, by a kind of wall, | 0:44:43 | 0:44:47 | |
I suppose, of incompetence and bureaucratic muddling. | 0:44:47 | 0:44:52 | |
The chap was clearly driven mad by these people, | 0:44:52 | 0:44:56 | |
forced in the end to resign his commission. | 0:44:56 | 0:44:59 | |
Even before the war ended, Grahame-White was not only compelled | 0:44:59 | 0:45:03 | |
to leave the military, but asked to expand his factory. | 0:45:03 | 0:45:07 | |
He'd been promised orders for more aircraft, | 0:45:07 | 0:45:10 | |
but they were then repeatedly withdrawn. | 0:45:10 | 0:45:13 | |
After the war, Grahame-White not only faced ruin, | 0:45:15 | 0:45:18 | |
but was shown no gratitude for everything he'd contributed to the war effort. | 0:45:18 | 0:45:23 | |
He tells us, "I could hardly believe that our British government | 0:45:25 | 0:45:29 | |
"could treat me - a pioneer - in such a harsh, unsporting and unappreciative manner." | 0:45:29 | 0:45:34 | |
So, why on earth was he treated so badly? | 0:45:36 | 0:45:39 | |
To find out, I've asked historian Josh Levine. | 0:45:39 | 0:45:42 | |
So, what went wrong? | 0:45:44 | 0:45:46 | |
The British military, whether you're looking at the Army or the Navy, | 0:45:46 | 0:45:50 | |
the British military is a very conservative institution, | 0:45:50 | 0:45:54 | |
and they don't trust a certain type of person. | 0:45:54 | 0:45:57 | |
Here was a man who was irreverent, who was freethinking, | 0:45:57 | 0:46:00 | |
I think it was a definite challenge to the way they viewed things, | 0:46:00 | 0:46:04 | |
and you get a sense of this, actually. | 0:46:04 | 0:46:06 | |
When he was given his commission into the Royal Naval Air Service, | 0:46:06 | 0:46:10 | |
he showed up at Admiralty Arch | 0:46:10 | 0:46:12 | |
and he met a man called Lord Edward Grosvenor. | 0:46:12 | 0:46:15 | |
And he was wearing spats and he was dressed up beautifully, | 0:46:15 | 0:46:20 | |
and he showed up and presented himself in front of Lord Edward Grosvenor | 0:46:20 | 0:46:24 | |
and said to him, "Look at me, how is this, will it do?" | 0:46:24 | 0:46:28 | |
And Lord Edward Grosvenor looked at him and said, | 0:46:28 | 0:46:30 | |
"My dear fellow, you've forgotten just one thing - the earrings." | 0:46:30 | 0:46:34 | |
And that gives you a sense of, you know, | 0:46:34 | 0:46:36 | |
"This man is a dandy, this man is not quite one of us. | 0:46:36 | 0:46:40 | |
Claude Grahame-White, even though he was from a good family, he was a mechanic, | 0:46:40 | 0:46:44 | |
he was a man who liked getting his hands dirty, | 0:46:44 | 0:46:46 | |
who didn't mind showing up at a factory at 6am, | 0:46:46 | 0:46:49 | |
working through to 8pm, and coming away with oil on his face. | 0:46:49 | 0:46:52 | |
Not only was he incredibly technically advanced | 0:46:52 | 0:46:55 | |
and pioneering with aeroplanes, but he was a very brave man. | 0:46:55 | 0:46:59 | |
He was an extraordinarily brave man, | 0:46:59 | 0:47:01 | |
and the fact is that they pushed him away. | 0:47:01 | 0:47:04 | |
They repeatedly pushed him away when they should have relied on him more. | 0:47:04 | 0:47:08 | |
They actually showed him no respect and no thanks, | 0:47:08 | 0:47:11 | |
no gratitude for what he'd been doing for so many years. | 0:47:11 | 0:47:15 | |
The time has come to write a great wrong, then, | 0:47:15 | 0:47:17 | |
and put his name back on the national map of heroes. | 0:47:17 | 0:47:21 | |
It was shabby treatment of a man who'd led the country in the field of aerial combat. | 0:47:23 | 0:47:28 | |
Who'd flown many perilous missions, | 0:47:28 | 0:47:31 | |
and trained many of the nation's famous fighter pilots. | 0:47:31 | 0:47:34 | |
Who'd put his life's blood, his aerodrome, | 0:47:34 | 0:47:37 | |
at the service of his country, | 0:47:37 | 0:47:40 | |
and fought to maintain the highest standards | 0:47:40 | 0:47:42 | |
in wartime manufacture and employment. | 0:47:42 | 0:47:45 | |
But, for all that he suffered at the hands of the government, | 0:47:45 | 0:47:49 | |
he never stopped looking to the future. | 0:47:49 | 0:47:51 | |
Towards the end of the war in 1918, Grahame-White - | 0:47:54 | 0:47:58 | |
then recovering from a nervous breakdown - | 0:47:58 | 0:48:01 | |
was asked what sort of war memorial | 0:48:01 | 0:48:03 | |
there should be for airmen who'd perished in the fighting. | 0:48:03 | 0:48:07 | |
His response was poignant and it was wise. | 0:48:07 | 0:48:11 | |
He said, "The finest war memorial we can devise | 0:48:13 | 0:48:17 | |
"would be to pledge ourselves | 0:48:17 | 0:48:19 | |
"to a vigorous development of aeronautics." | 0:48:19 | 0:48:22 | |
"Thus, on the foundations of their heroism, | 0:48:22 | 0:48:25 | |
"can be built a great peace movement | 0:48:25 | 0:48:28 | |
"which will break down the barriers between nations | 0:48:28 | 0:48:31 | |
"and stimulate all that is best in the relations of mankind." | 0:48:31 | 0:48:37 | |
Stupendous. | 0:48:37 | 0:48:38 | |
Grahame-White's building is also a memorial to the fallen pilots. | 0:48:42 | 0:48:47 | |
He never wavered in his conviction | 0:48:49 | 0:48:51 | |
that the true role of aviation should be civil and peaceful. | 0:48:51 | 0:48:54 | |
He published proposals for a chain of civil aerodromes | 0:48:59 | 0:49:02 | |
with aids for night flying and direction finding, | 0:49:02 | 0:49:06 | |
demonstrated that airlines could be reliable, safe and profitable. | 0:49:06 | 0:49:10 | |
With all his brooding over his bold idea, | 0:49:14 | 0:49:16 | |
I picture him in this building, bent over plans late into the night. | 0:49:16 | 0:49:21 | |
So here it is, the relocated | 0:49:28 | 0:49:31 | |
and rebuilt Claude Grahame-White headquarters and watchtower. | 0:49:31 | 0:49:36 | |
'There it was, looking as it would have done when first constructed - | 0:49:36 | 0:49:40 | |
'the building that should have been the nerve centre | 0:49:40 | 0:49:43 | |
'of Britain's first international airport.' | 0:49:43 | 0:49:46 | |
Very English, I mean, it's quintessentially English, | 0:49:46 | 0:49:49 | |
and quite playful, I can imagine it on a race course | 0:49:49 | 0:49:51 | |
or by the Thames at Henley, sort of grandstand meets pavilion. | 0:49:51 | 0:49:56 | |
Absolutely. It's very calculated to impress, | 0:49:56 | 0:50:00 | |
making a sort of heavy point | 0:50:00 | 0:50:02 | |
about the importance of him and his company. | 0:50:02 | 0:50:05 | |
And the balustrade is like it's from St Paul's Cathedral. | 0:50:05 | 0:50:09 | |
'I can already see the building | 0:50:09 | 0:50:11 | |
'as a striking testimony to Claude Grahame-White.' | 0:50:11 | 0:50:14 | |
When people landed on the airfield or came from the airfield, | 0:50:15 | 0:50:18 | |
they would have been received here, so the posh front of the building | 0:50:18 | 0:50:22 | |
sits here next to the airfield, but come with me. | 0:50:22 | 0:50:25 | |
'From the reception, | 0:50:25 | 0:50:26 | |
'the world of Grahame-White the entrepreneur and campaigner, | 0:50:26 | 0:50:30 | |
'we move to the world of Grahame-White the innovator.' | 0:50:30 | 0:50:33 | |
This is the business end of the building. | 0:50:33 | 0:50:36 | |
This is the heart and soul of the whole operation in many ways. | 0:50:36 | 0:50:40 | |
This was the drawing office. | 0:50:40 | 0:50:42 | |
This is where he would have drawn up his plans | 0:50:45 | 0:50:47 | |
for Britain's first airliners and airports. | 0:50:47 | 0:50:51 | |
And in those days, as you approached through the reception area, | 0:50:51 | 0:50:54 | |
your eye would have been drawn to this. | 0:50:54 | 0:50:56 | |
-It's a fuse box isn't it, glorified fuse box. -It is a fuse box. | 0:50:57 | 0:51:01 | |
You can see the draw of various circuits. | 0:51:01 | 0:51:04 | |
It sums up Claude Grahame-White to me in so many ways in his attitude. | 0:51:04 | 0:51:08 | |
You know, he's fetishising technology. | 0:51:08 | 0:51:10 | |
You've got the latest 20th-century technology | 0:51:10 | 0:51:12 | |
surrounded by a piece of furniture | 0:51:12 | 0:51:14 | |
which is looking back to the Romans to try and give it gravitas. | 0:51:14 | 0:51:17 | |
You can trust this, this is trustable, dependable technology. | 0:51:17 | 0:51:21 | |
It's in a way very modern, isn't it? | 0:51:21 | 0:51:23 | |
It's an honest expression of power, | 0:51:23 | 0:51:26 | |
of the practical aspect of the factory, | 0:51:26 | 0:51:29 | |
make a virtue, make an ornament of it. | 0:51:29 | 0:51:31 | |
He's got notice boards right next to them. | 0:51:31 | 0:51:33 | |
I mean, it really is a conscious act, he wants people to see it. | 0:51:33 | 0:51:37 | |
"This is the future, this is MY future. Welcome to it." | 0:51:37 | 0:51:39 | |
That's exactly what it's about, isn't it? | 0:51:39 | 0:51:41 | |
A display of the future for his visitors. | 0:51:41 | 0:51:43 | |
These are the stairs to mission control. | 0:51:43 | 0:51:47 | |
'You can imagine Grahame-White leading government officials | 0:51:47 | 0:51:50 | |
'and politicians, maybe even Churchill himself, | 0:51:50 | 0:51:53 | |
'up here to try and persuade them | 0:51:53 | 0:51:55 | |
'of the advantages of powered flight.' | 0:51:55 | 0:51:57 | |
This is the inner sanctum if you like, | 0:51:59 | 0:52:02 | |
this is his office. | 0:52:02 | 0:52:04 | |
Good heavens, this is absolutely astonishing. | 0:52:05 | 0:52:07 | |
Uncanny. It's all familiar, I feel I've seen it before | 0:52:07 | 0:52:11 | |
and, of course, in a way I have. In the early photographs. | 0:52:11 | 0:52:14 | |
Although impressive at first sight, I found it surprisingly dark | 0:52:16 | 0:52:20 | |
and old fashioned, almost oppressively so. | 0:52:20 | 0:52:23 | |
They've really gone into detail. | 0:52:25 | 0:52:27 | |
Not only is it convincing in its detail based on photographs, | 0:52:27 | 0:52:31 | |
there's...an atmosphere. | 0:52:31 | 0:52:34 | |
Everything about this office speaks of man straining to impress, | 0:52:35 | 0:52:40 | |
a man who would go to any lengths to win over the old guard. | 0:52:40 | 0:52:44 | |
You can imagine him rolling out his plans for airports, | 0:52:44 | 0:52:47 | |
aids for night-flying and his grand vision for the people's airlines. | 0:52:47 | 0:52:53 | |
It's such an insight into the man, this, isn't it? | 0:52:53 | 0:52:55 | |
This way this chap's running an utterly futuristic factory, | 0:52:55 | 0:52:59 | |
looking to the future of aviation. | 0:52:59 | 0:53:02 | |
But yet to make that acceptable, he found it necessary | 0:53:02 | 0:53:05 | |
to be surrounded by history in this way gave him the right gravitas, | 0:53:05 | 0:53:10 | |
the right status. | 0:53:10 | 0:53:11 | |
But there was one important bit of this building | 0:53:11 | 0:53:14 | |
that was neither status-seeking nor dripping in historical detail - | 0:53:14 | 0:53:19 | |
the room at the top - the great man's watchtower. | 0:53:19 | 0:53:22 | |
What do we think this watchtower was really used for? | 0:53:22 | 0:53:27 | |
We now know that it wasn't actually built at the same time | 0:53:27 | 0:53:30 | |
as the head office here. | 0:53:30 | 0:53:31 | |
It was built some time afterwards, around about 1919. | 0:53:31 | 0:53:35 | |
You look around and it's got a tremendous perspective | 0:53:35 | 0:53:39 | |
over the entire site. | 0:53:39 | 0:53:41 | |
It as a vantage point, a viewing platform. | 0:53:41 | 0:53:43 | |
But then without realising it, it sort of creates | 0:53:43 | 0:53:46 | |
the prototype for the control tower without even meaning to do it. | 0:53:46 | 0:53:51 | |
We'd rather like to think | 0:53:51 | 0:53:53 | |
that it was very much a part of that ambitious Grahame-White, | 0:53:53 | 0:53:57 | |
he was finding his feet again after the war, | 0:53:57 | 0:53:59 | |
he was looking to the future and the watchtower symbolises that ambition. | 0:53:59 | 0:54:03 | |
Grahame-White, the man of vision, | 0:54:07 | 0:54:10 | |
never got the recognition in his lifetime he so richly deserved. | 0:54:10 | 0:54:14 | |
But almost 100 years to the day | 0:54:14 | 0:54:16 | |
since he first arrived in Hendon, the local people have turned out | 0:54:16 | 0:54:20 | |
to celebrate the return of a local hero. | 0:54:20 | 0:54:24 | |
A hero immortalised in this wonderful, resurrected building. | 0:54:24 | 0:54:29 | |
And it's even being given the royal seal of approval. | 0:54:29 | 0:54:33 | |
Your Royal Highness, may I on behalf of the trustees | 0:54:33 | 0:54:37 | |
of the Royal Air Force Museum, welcome you here today | 0:54:37 | 0:54:40 | |
to this formal unveiling of the Grahame-White Watch Office | 0:54:40 | 0:54:44 | |
and indeed, this whole complex including the factory. | 0:54:44 | 0:54:47 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:54:47 | 0:54:48 | |
Ah, guys, there you are! | 0:54:50 | 0:54:52 | |
How's it going, Charlie? | 0:54:52 | 0:54:53 | |
-Congratulations. -Thank you. | 0:54:53 | 0:54:55 | |
What can I say? It looks fantastic! | 0:54:55 | 0:54:57 | |
It must be the best built, Jerry-built building in history. | 0:54:57 | 0:55:01 | |
It certainly is and it will last, unlike the original construction. | 0:55:01 | 0:55:04 | |
It's given us an unbelievable feeling of pride | 0:55:04 | 0:55:07 | |
in constructing this building. | 0:55:07 | 0:55:09 | |
it's turned out well. We're so happy with it. | 0:55:09 | 0:55:11 | |
And we hope that the great man, if he did come back, would love it. | 0:55:11 | 0:55:14 | |
I think if he was with us today, Claude Grahame-White, | 0:55:17 | 0:55:19 | |
he would really be really stunned I think, and very proud. | 0:55:19 | 0:55:23 | |
It's a practical building but it's got that edge, | 0:55:23 | 0:55:26 | |
that flamboyance that the man quite clearly had. | 0:55:26 | 0:55:30 | |
She was a very kind person, she would help anybody. | 0:55:32 | 0:55:35 | |
I was very fond of her, yes. | 0:55:38 | 0:55:39 | |
She made a fuss of me, I must admit. | 0:55:40 | 0:55:42 | |
I'm very proud of her being a part of all this. | 0:55:44 | 0:55:46 | |
I can't help thinking Grahame-White would be delighted | 0:55:48 | 0:55:52 | |
to see what was happening in his building today. | 0:55:52 | 0:55:54 | |
Grahame-White the employer, the educator, | 0:55:54 | 0:55:57 | |
the visionary, always looking to the future. | 0:55:57 | 0:56:01 | |
And here we have the future - the young people of Hendon getting | 0:56:01 | 0:56:04 | |
excited by and drawing inspiration from his building and his vision. | 0:56:04 | 0:56:09 | |
For all his drive, for all his dedication, | 0:56:16 | 0:56:19 | |
Grahame-White never realised his dream | 0:56:19 | 0:56:21 | |
of putting Hendon at the centre | 0:56:21 | 0:56:23 | |
of the development of global air travel. | 0:56:23 | 0:56:25 | |
When the war ended, | 0:56:27 | 0:56:29 | |
the government refused to return his airfield to him. | 0:56:29 | 0:56:32 | |
As if that wasn't enough, | 0:56:32 | 0:56:34 | |
they later took possession of his entire factory. | 0:56:34 | 0:56:37 | |
He took proceedings against the Treasury | 0:56:37 | 0:56:39 | |
and was eventually awarded compensation. | 0:56:39 | 0:56:42 | |
But by then he was too disheartened | 0:56:42 | 0:56:44 | |
to return to the business of aviation. | 0:56:44 | 0:56:47 | |
A tragedy for Hendon and for Britain. | 0:56:47 | 0:56:51 | |
When I first saw the jigsaw puzzle, the fragments of this building, | 0:56:52 | 0:56:57 | |
I never really imagined that in putting it back together, | 0:56:57 | 0:57:00 | |
we would build up such a rich and complex picture of a man. | 0:57:00 | 0:57:06 | |
But then again, buildings are all about people. | 0:57:06 | 0:57:10 | |
And no matter how grand or humble, | 0:57:10 | 0:57:14 | |
they all have stories to tell. | 0:57:14 | 0:57:16 | |
Claude Grahame-White came close to being airbrushed out of history, | 0:57:18 | 0:57:22 | |
he was almost a forgotten man, | 0:57:22 | 0:57:25 | |
but in saving and reconstructing this building, | 0:57:25 | 0:57:29 | |
all that he did is now enshrined in bricks and mortar. | 0:57:29 | 0:57:34 | |
Surely there could be no better, | 0:57:34 | 0:57:37 | |
no more inspirational monument to Grahame-White than this building, | 0:57:37 | 0:57:42 | |
because it embodies the man himself and his vision of aviation. | 0:57:42 | 0:57:48 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:12 | 0:58:15 |