MONUMENTS OF AVIATORS.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 7752, 22 July 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

MONUMENTS OF AVIATORS.

WHERE THEY MAY BE SEEN. Some curious monuments —and some others pathetic—are to he found in various parts of Britaha giving details of happenings to aviators. A singular memorial recording the first aerial journey to England may he seen in a field midway between the hamlets of High Cross and Rowney Abbey, in Hertfordshire, at n spot called Stondon End. The rusticsicall it the “Balloon Stone.” It is a rough Mock of sandstone, surrounded by an iron rnlijng, and the inscription tolls how on Sept. I7th, 1784, Vincent Lunardi, “the nrst aerial traveller in Britain, mounting from the -artillery ground in London, and traversing the regions of the at? for two hours and fifteen minutes, in this snot revisited the earth.” The first aviator to lose his life in England was Percy Pilcher, who, in 1800, endeavoured to make a flight with -a gliding aeroplane. He started off in Stanford Park, the seat of Lord Brave, between Rugby mad' Market Hnrborough, but lie had only travelled 1.50 yards when a sharp gust overturned his machine and lie fell GOft . receiving injuries from which he died on October 2nd. A monument was erected on the spot where he fell. There is a striking cement figure of n monop'ane in North Fall Meadow, on Dover Heights, in memory of the first cross-Channel flight by aeroplane made by Bleriot, July 25th, 1909, from Calais in thirty-seven minutes. And down on Dover front stands a bronze statue of the Hon. 0. S. Rolls, hero of the double flight, June 2nd, 1910, who was killed it Bournemouth a month later, says the “Times.” He is represented in his airman’s costume, looking with a fateful intensity towards the const of France. Rolls, it may he added, Ims mother memorial at Mon-