Poet-in-Residence Journal: Avro Heritage Museum, Woodford, Cheshire (March-September 2026) Part

I came down the stairs and saw a group of eager children standing beside a small prototype of a biplane — the first aircraft A. V. Roe designed.

            “The engine was placed at the back,” the tour guide told the children, “because A.V. used to work on a ship where the propellers were placed at the back of the vessel, he thought propellers should be at the back of his aeroplane.”

            The children looked up at him. “Did he fly in this plane?” a little girl asked.

            “No,” the guide answered. “He wouldn’t have been able to fit, it's too small.”

            The teachers laughed and followed the group to where a large propeller was fastened to the wall.

            “You can touch it if you want,” he told them.

            The children ran their tiny hands over the propeller. They knew what it meant to be touching a piece of history — I could see it in their eyes.

            We then continued into the cockpit of the Anson aircraft. One little boy was worried that it would take off with him and wanted to leave. He came down the stairs, with the teacher and sat on a step. “I fly on aeroplanes all the time,” he said. “But I don’t want to fly on a war plane.”

            I glanced at him. In just over a decade he would be old enough to enter combat.

We waited for the others to joins us. Each cockpit we went in, the little boy stayed as close to the door as possible. When the tour was over, I watched him climb the stairs with his teacher. Perhaps he would grow up to be a pacifist, I thought, as were many of the engineers who worked on the first military aircraft during the First World War.

When I returned to the museum the following week, I started on the 1910 diary.

“27^th January 1910: Left Manchester midnight, worked till 20 to 12 pricing up wood, (…). Had to run for the train but had plenty of time.” (A.V. Roe: Diary, Jan. 1910).

           A. V’s voice sounded immediate and concise. This small window into his day led me to wonder what Manchester would have been like during the Edwardian period. A midnight train to London. The darkened streets, the gas lampposts illuminating his steps. The narrow-cobbled alleys between Ancote and what was then known as London Road Station (now Manchester Piccadilly Station).

            I imagined how cold it would have been. A bitter Edwardian winter’s night, heavy with smoke emitting from gas lamps, large industrial chimneys floating into the sky. The diary entry, albeit small, told me so much about A. V’s tenacity, his tireless work ethics as he pushed forward to bring his dream to fruition.

        The midnight train to London Euston was a coal-eating machine with sleeper carriages. He would arrive at Euston five hours later, go home to see his wife, Mildred, then arrive at Brooklands at 9:00 a.m. to continue his flying experiments. Brownfield Mill in Manchester was where he built his aircraft, Brooklands was one of the many sites where he tested them.

            He later wrote down a list of items that he needed for his work:

“Tracing linen, drawing paper, Indian ink,” (A. V. Roe: Diary, 24^th Feb 1910).

On 10^th April 1910, he entered in his diary: “Had trial. I came down heavily, broke shoulder, parts and propeller,” (A. V. Roe: Diary, 10^th April 1910).

            These entries were the hardest to read — seeing how he’d tested his machines with his body. There were no manuals on how to fly. The techniques and skills were born with every risk Alliott took.

To be continued...

This post will continue next Sunday. Thank you for reading.