Coupland (William Vernon)

1919.
this enormous plan reflects the scale of the post-war ambition of the flamboyant self-made entrepreneur and aircraft manufacturer, John Whitehead, although it formed only a relatively brief chapter in the 20th century history of the area. It extends from just north of the sweeping arc of the London & South Western Railway’s Windsor Line, including the nurseries and allotments around Bedfont Lane in the top left corner, down to Snakey Lane and Twickenham Road, serving the village of Hanworth, in the south, and from Lower Feltham in the east to the River Crane in the west. In between are the growing conurbation of Feltham and the open expanse of Hanworth Park. Just over a decade before the opening of Heathrow as a small airfield to the north west, and nearly three decades and another World War before that was to become London Airport, this plan records the earliest phase of the region’s transition from market gardening to international air travel when this pocket of land was briefly designated as Whitehead Park. Further marking the advent of change wrought by the leaps in technological and social progress generated by the First World War, are the lingering references to the centuries-old heritage of the area, with the colour-coded boundaries to The Grange Estate, Feltham House Estate, Parkside, The Hollies, Elmwood Estate, Newmans Land, Rookeries Estate, Tudor House Estate, all to the west and south of Hanworth Estate, with Woodlawn and The Oaks to the east.

John Alexander (Jack) Whitehead (1876-1949) was born the son of a wine merchant in London’s East End, but set off as a very young man, in the 1890s, to find his fortune in America. He returned in 1914 with three young children, following his divorce, and briefly joined the Royal Navy Air Service as a mechanic. He then joined the Grahame-White Airplane Company, in Hendon, as a carpenter. In 1915, Whitehead went into partnership with the Richmond Automobile Company, in premises which had already been equipped to manufacture aircraft, and was able to secure a government contract to build six BE2b biplanes, thereby forming the first incarnation of the Whitehead Aircraft Company. Following further contracts, and the increasing need for open space in which to fly and test, in September 1916 Whitehead bought the 200-acre Hanworth Park Estate. This was soon followed by the acquisition of adjoining estates and the construction of new works on the outskirts of Feltham to supplement the existing factory in Richmond. This rapid drive for expansion required significant further capital, so in the autumn of 1917 shares were issued in the new company of Whitehead Aircraft (1917) Limited.

There was also a natural obstacle to overcome, in the form of the Longford River, running from upper left to lower right across this plan, specifically the open space earmarked for the airfield, and Whitehead’s vision for a post-war civil aerodrome. This was successfully diverted through the ingenuity of the resident engineer, and co-signatory of the plan, Auriol Sealy-Allin, who devised a reverse siphon to drop the river down through an underground culvert, before raising it back to its natural level to continue its course into the ponds at Hampton Court. Sealy-Allin (c.1868-1940) was born in Cork, Ireland, the son of an engineer who brought his family to London in the early 1880s. Following in his father’s footsteps, Auriol was elected an Associate Member of the Institute of Civil Engineers in 1894. After a spell working on the Bengal-Nagpur Railway, Sealy-Allin settled first in Hounslow, then in Taplow, both in the Thames Valley west of London. He later moved to South Africa, where he died.

The primary signatory of the plan was the architect, William Vernon Coupland (1895-1958). He had been articled to Frederick Endell Rosser in East Sheen, then worked for Sir Arthur Blomfield & Sons, and Edwin Thomas Hall. He designed the works buildings for Whitehead Aircraft Ltd in both Richmond and at Feltham. A year after this plan, in 1920, he was elected an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and soon after went into partnership with William Edward Couch as Couch & Coupland.

Despite Jack Whitehead’s unquestionable energy and vision, sources of funding failed to match the scale of his ambition, so his dreams of creating a permanent aerodrome, providing an international mail service, and even a commuter service, never materialised. He went bankrupt in 1920, and Whitehead Aircraft closed with the loss of 2000 jobs. Various parts of the works were taken over for the manufacture of underground trains, trams, trolleybuses, and even Aston Martin cars. The airfield, itself, became the London Air Park, used for training, manufacture and testing, competitions and other flying activities, until its proximity to the suddenly vastly expanded Heathrow, opened as London Airport in 1946, made this all but impossible. Whitehead, himself, emigrated again for a few years, this time to Canada, before returning to England in 1929, and establishing his most successfully enduring business, producing apples on the Cockayne Hatley Estate in Bedfordshire, which soon became the largest orchard in Europe..
980 by 1285mm (38½ by 50½ inches).