Houghton House
Note: This map gives only my estimation of where this location is within the UK.
HOUGHTON HOUSE: First ‘official’ man-carrying kite display in the UK?
(Aka HOUGHTON HALL today?)
Location: Roughly 2.5nm NNE of Carlisle town centre
Period of operation: Between the 4th and 8th April 1899
NOTES: I have found several reports that Samuel Cody included a man carrying kite in his performances of the ‘Klondyke Nugget’ show carried out in theatres such as the Royal County Theatre - Reading, the Theatre Royal – Bath, Royalty Theatre - Llanelly, Queen’s Theatre – Birmingham and the Lycium in Crew. The idea of these acts being a 'real' flying display is clearly absurd but perhaps they staged a simulation?
Common sense dictates that Cody and his ‘crew’ must surely have been making trials before this event took place? Mrs Jean Roberts is now recognised as being the world authority on what Samuel F Cody achieved so I will mostly rely on her accounts.
However, it seems we must bear in mind that "Good ‘ole Sam Cody" was, (his real name was Cowdery it seems), from what I can make out, basically a showman, chancer, a liar and a cheat in his early days. Illiterate and innumerate for most of his life, (he even claimed to be a playwright), he was, nevertheless, a quite extraordinary genius.
Especially when it came to designing and building man-carrying kites, airships and eventually - aeroplanes. So, quite incredible that he became a national hero in Great Britain and, on his death flying one of his aeroplanes which collapsed in the air when flying at or near LAFFINS PLAIN (HAMPSHIRE) and now part of the FARNBOROUGH complex, he was given the next best thing to a State funeral.
Perhaps oddly, given his mythical status in more recent times of being the first to fly a powered aircraft in the UK, it appears he never made that claim for himself. Which seems very odd for somebody with his reputation. From my research I now believe he was very aware that others had successfully preceeded his first 'hop' on LAFFINS PLAIN.
BACK TO THE STORY
Coming back to this site it appears it was due to the intervention of the Rev. Sidney Swann, (look out for his name elsewhere in CUMBRIA flying site listings), that whilst Cody was performing his show at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Lowther Street, Carlisle, that the Rev. Swann arranged for Cody to demonstrate his man-carrying kite arrangement at HOUGHTON HOUSE, then the home of Henry Brooks Broadhurst.
It must be remembered that in those days the distinction between man-carrying kites and gliders was minimal. Either method could have led to powered flight and in fact, both did, more or less coinciding. Another little recorded fact about how early powered flight developed.
It seems that at that time Cody had arranged a series of kites flying in ‘tandem’ fashion and suspended beneath the third or fourth kite a seat was slung on which a man sat, taking him up several hundred feet. This really was pioneering territory and it is reported that on that ‘first’ flight, “One of the upper kites broke away and went soaring over towards Carlisle with its wires trailing after it.”
Despite his reputation today, it appears that Sam Cody wasn’t always too keen to get airborne himself. Indeed , virtually all his family, including his ‘second’ wife, took their chances in these kites too. Who knows? Perhaps this was his way of proving his faith in the reliability of his kites?
THE CODY KITES
Records appear to confirm that Cody kept on flying his various kite designs whilst conducting his theatre tours and that Cody undertook 'large kite' flying trials between 1899 and 1901. It seems the first time he went aloft was in BURY St EDMUNDS in November 1901. And that being by his own testimony.
In 1902 for example Cody demonstrated his kites to War Office officials; for Major Trollope in Worcester, (January), and Col. Templer at Seaham harbour, (April). On neither occasion was a man carried aloft it appears. Indeed, it now seems that during the whole episode which Cody undertook to prove his ideas, the undertaking appears fraught with problems and the concept of the ‘man carrying kite’ was, in many ways, as a practical military 'device' or 'machine' was flawed from the start.
A pretty stiff wind or a towing ‘vehicle’ of some sort was needed to get his contraptions off the ground. But, he did succeed eventually, although the concept was never really adopted by the Army or Navy.
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