Poet-in-Residence Journal: Avro Heritage Museum, Woodford, Cheshire (March-September 2026) Part 5

On realising that the diaries were missing, I asked if anyone knew where they were. The sound of gunfire echoed in the distance. The O.K. Corral was warming up, I thought.

            “No,” they answered. “We’ve been conducting a thorough search for them, but it has been unsuccessful so far. Maybe they weren’t included among the things donated to the museum by his children.”

            A second echo rippled through the room. I opened the 1906 diary and read the first entry. There wasn’t much written during the months of January and February. Then, in late March, he wrote.

“Agreed to work for Davidson experimenting with flying machines.”

(Alliott Verdon-Roe, Diary, 22 March 1906).

                  I then realised just how much those missing diaries had changed the landscape of A.V.’s biography. He was no longer working on a Steamship. Instead, he was employed as an aeroplane draughtsman — a technical drawer — someone who detailed all the parts, knots, struts and bolts the machine needed to fly. Within a week of A.V. starting work with Davidson, he was invited to travel to Denver, Colorado, with the Scottish aviator and employer. Davidson’s experiment was said to be a giant car-like machine known as the “Gyropter,” an image I struggled to form in my mind.

            The O.K. Corral had quieted down. A gregarious chatter echoed on the other side of the door. A group of schoolchildren were on their way to the Vulcan Café. I paused. Anyone who wants to make it to the top must first start at the bottom, I thought. Alliott Verdon-Roe had started at the bottom, working and testing new possibilities before he landed on the thing that would shape his life forever.

            I continued. A.V. was happy about his part in Davidson’s experiment. Albeit a small one. His parents and then fiancée, Lil, saw him off at Waterloo Station. He wrote that a band was playing as the passengers boarded the ship in Southampton. On board he was seasick a few times in the morning. “Passed close to a large iceberg. Feeling much better in the afternoon,” he wrote in his diary on 15 April 1906. Notice the date this entry was made — precisely six years before the famous sinking of the Titanic.

            The schoolchildren had returned from the café and were queuing by the lavatory doors. The buzzer on the door to the archive-room sounded and the museum director came into the room.

            “The children are here for a few hours,” he told me. “Do you want to come down and perhaps go on the tours with one group? It’s an opportunity for you to go inside the aircraft with one of our expert members. The Vulcan tour will be given by an ex-Vulcan pilot,” he informed me.

            “Yes,” I answered, glancing at the diary. “I would love to.”

            “I’ll come and get you when we’re ready,” he said.

            “Thank you,” I replied.

                  I returned to the diary. A.V. had arrived in New York. He checked into the Imperial Hotel, then had coffee at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, before going up a few skyscrapers to take in the views over the city. I began to wonder which skyscrapers they would have been.

            The following day, he went around New York, this time in “a sightseeing car.” What would he have seen: springtime in a city going through a major economic boom?

            He left New York that evening and passed through Buffalo before arriving in Chicago. He went for a walk around the city, then arrived in Denver on the 21 April.

            The buzzer at the door sounded again. The signal was given. I got up, closed my notebook, and picked up my pen. I followed the director down two flights of stairs and into the hangar, where the children and their teachers were waiting.

To be continued...

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