Flying over the Flats

A history of aerial adventures on Wanstead Flats

As a large area of common ground in the middle of east London, Wanstead Flats has been home to a vast range of activities over the centuries, from leisure to commerce to war. But it has also been the perfect launchpad for a dizzying number of attempts to take to the skies as well as returning to terra firma - not always successfully.
In this narrative we will be charting the array of different types of flights that have taken place on the Flats over the last two centuries.

Many of these were purely recreational, from pigeon flying – the sport was actually launched on the Flats - to kite flying, paragliding and model aircraft flying that anyone who has ever strolled across the Flats at a weekend will be familiar with.

But there have been more serious reasons for taking to - or being threatened from - the sky. These include the bombing raids of two world wars, anti-aircraft weapons and barrage balloons as well as parachute training for many years after the war.

And then there are the utterly bizarre that leaving the earth seems to encourage - the sort of escapades that Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines would surely be proud of. These include an abrupt balloon descent in the 1830s, Captain Cody's man-bearing kite, first tried out on the Flats and not a roaring success, and an
interplanetary space exploration that doesn't seem to have ever achieved lift-off.

Sometimes these flights have been from choice, at other times they were necessity. But all share a specific space - that of Wanstead Flats - and the dream of exploring the skies and seeing the land below from a very different perspective. The Flats would be a less exotic - and flatter - prospect without them. This is our tribute.

Published by Leyton & Leytonstone Historical Society, Wanstead Flats Working Group,