Ranelagh Club
RANELAGH CLUB: Temporary airfield & regular ballooning launching venue
Note: This picture was published in the The Illustrated London News on the 11th June 1910.
Location: The address of the Ranelagh Club in 1889 is given as 76 Charlwood Road, Putney. Charlwood Road is roughly parallel to and roughly 0.25nm W of Putney High Street, running N from Richmond Road, now part of the A205 South Circular Road
NOTES: It does seem rather odd to me that two very popular venues for mass balloon ascents should exist so close together. HURLINGHAM is barely a mile away, in Fulham on the N bank of the Thames. Further investigation reveals the Ranelagh Club, in 1898 accepted women as members, which might well explain the division? However, it is also clear that the HURLINGHAM also had women aeronauts as members, at least for participating in balloon events.
The first record I have found of the Ranelagh being used was the announcement that the third Aero Club meeting, (this would have been for ballooning of course), was due to be held on the 29th June 1907 at 4 p.m. I think it is of great interest that one of the prizes being competed for at that meeting was ‘The Northcliffe Prize’ to be presented by Lord Northcliffe for the balloon or aeroplane, (Mark that quote: “balloon or aeroplane”), that travels the longest distance in the United Kingdom in the year 1907.
So imagine my surprise several years later to discover, in his excellent book 'Flying and Ballooning - from old photographs', John Fabb shows a photograph captioned, “The start of the race for the Harbord Cup in May 1907 from Ranelagh. The winning post was Goring Railway Station.” The fact that ‘Winning Posts’ were put in place certainly seems to indicate that most of these aeronauts were really quite proficient at gauging the effects of lower level eddies in the wind flow to be able to navigate so accurately.
Quite how you can do this in, for example, a hydrogen balloon, seems quite remarkable. You can of course use leakage to assist descent, and release ballast to assist ascent, but both cannot be replaced whilst airborne. The winner it appears descended within a hundred yards of the stake! Across the Thames to the NE the HURLINGHAM CLUB, (see seperate entry), had a special gas produced for them by the local gasworks, but I doubt the Ranelagh Club had access to this supply?
In the second picture John Fabb has the caption: "Ballooning at Ranelagh, 1907. The destination of the race (communicated 'just before the ascent') was Goring-on-Thames. The winner 'descended within a hundred yards of the stake'."
John Fabb also includes another photograph, captioned, “Balloon Club meeting at Ranelagh, 30 May 1908”. It was quite obviously another mass ascent of many balloons.
There is another aspect of these balloon races, both from HURLINGHAM and RANELAGH, which intrigues me. In each example of a race I have discovered, they all flew west. As the prevailing winds in SE England are from the west it does seem to illustrate two things which surely must be inter-related? Firstly that their weather forecasting must have been pretty accurate, (?), and/or, they could quickly arrange these races at short notice? The second aspect of which is I suppose, easy to achieve if you employ a raft of servants and spend much of your time ‘at leisure’.
POWERED FLIGHT
The great Rheims meeting was held in the last week of August in 1909. The reason I mention this is because Lord Northcliffe, who owned the Daily Mail newspaper surely did much, much more than any one single individual to promote aviation generally and powered aircraft in particular within the UK. Today I think we tend to concentrate on the early pioneering aviators, but as this man had such prescience he must now be regarded as a visionary personage? Indeed, I now think it can be convincingly argued that it was mainly through his patronage that powered aviation in the UK advanced to such a degree that when WW1 was declared this country had the people with enough expertise to quickly catch up with and soon equal that of the French?
I suppose it might perhaps be hard to believe today that an area existed in the grounds of the Ranelagh Club area for the safe operation of aircraft? But, it does appear Claude Grahame-Wight visited quite regularly to make many passenger carrying flights from 1910. I have discovered a photograph of Grahame-White flying in front of the Club building and indeed, he might well have based his Farman here for a while before moving to CRYSTAL PALACE.
However, it would appear the main aviation activity at the club was ballooning and I have seen pictures of a massed ascent taking place probably around 1910 (?). To further confuse matters there is a park named Ranelagh Gardens just west of Chelsea Bridge Road and north of the Chelsea Embankment. Is it also possible balloon ascents were made here? And of course there was another RANELAGH GARDENS in Norwich - see seperate listing.
A MICHAEL T HOLDER GALLERY
In December 2020, Mike Holder, a great friend of this 'Guide', decided to have a look at a couple of accounts he had found of Gustav Hamel, then one of the most famous aviators of that era, flying down from HENDON on a two seater a Blériot, with Capt. Mark Kerr as passenger, to attend a visit being made by the King and Queen for awarding prizes at the Club on the 11th June 1912.
For us today this flight is very interesting. Clearly it must have been arranged in advance - even Hamel couldn't gate-crash a Royal event without severe repercussions - although getting beheaded, hung drawn and quartered etc, were by then deemed a tad too severe. But, clearly, they must have flown over some very dense built up areas to some extent.
This said, as a result of very far sighted urban planning in the Victorian era, London does have, as a legacy, a remarkable amount of parks, large public gardens and so on. Therefore, in the event of an engine failure, it is quite likely that Hamel could have found a suitable place to crash land. He would only have needed, if he got his approach path spot-on, around about two hundred metres or so to safely land on.
NOTE: Clearly this visit by Hamel attracted a lot of attention in the press at the time. The last picture is of an account published in The Henley and South Oxfordshire Standard on the 14th June.
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