World War One Aviation Tower | Brick By Brick: Rebuilding Our Past | Reel Truth History Documentary

every year countless thousands of ordinary buildings are demolished smashed down to make way for the new for many this fate is unavoidable but some are so special they're saved carefully taken down piece by piece stored away until a new home for them can be found and they can be lovingly and painstakingly rebuilt these are not grand buildings for always exceptional pieces of architecture but preserve within the fabric are extraordinary stories about who we are as a nation and what we have achieved about the materials and the techniques we use it looks about why we build the way we do just feels like you're making it the way it should be mined in this series I'm gonna uncover the hidden history behind these seemingly humble buildings to reveal there's not just the houses of the great and rich that have remarkable stories to tell my grandfather is probably the first airman to die in the first well I'll be seeing how these huge incredibly complex jigsaw puzzles that were once buildings are actually put back together again [Music] at a site in Hendon on the outskirts of London getting on for 3,000 new homes are under construction but a hundred years ago this was the sense of all the greatest revolutions in human transplant it was here that the whole idea of modern air travel was from 1911 mrs. Webb Britain's first airmail was dispatched we're the first-ever airliners were built and tested and where some of the very first fare-paying passengers flights took off three years later it became a home for massive 50-acre aircraft production center now the heart of his pioneering enterprise was this building here were the offices with the pans for Britain's first airliners and warplanes were drawn and above them a 360-degree aviation watch tower where the mastermind behind the operation could see the new aircraft being tested launched [Music] Forgotten are neglected for 20 years there's all that remained of one of Britain's first aviation buildings it was on the size the new development that it was listed recognizing the building's importance English heritage gave consent read to be relocated so was taken apart brick by brick and all the elements preserved and to the new site could be found when it could be pieced back together and restored to its former glory and happily that day has come thanks to the persistence of local people and planners the buildings can be brought back to life at the heart of Hendon where it belongs is coming here to the RAF Museum which occupies part of the original aerodrome and when here the Builder will act as a reminder of those days when Britain led the world in the field of aviation that iconic building has been dismantled and moved across the old aerodrome to the museum site and over the next nine months we'll see the enormous task involved in piecing it all back together property developer Heston Axwell and construction engineer Derek Walsh can at last begin the job with reconstruction this this is it this is the entire building laid out yes these are the features we managed to keep from the salvage operations because it doesn't seem to be a lot of I mean this was a big building wasn't it it was about 15,000 square feet but the ends were the only bits were of interest for the North and South elevation so this is all for those those two ends photographs taken before it was demolished reveal that it was a long narrow industrial shed but it's either end in its heyday were two grand entrances facing onto the road it was only single-story but at the airfield end was a much more elaborate two-story structure with a viewing balcony fronted by a balustrade and on top what became the model for the world's airport watchtowers have you got a sort of a big instruction book we do we have a big set of plans that the architects prepared everything goes back together according to this okay that details the location of every single ballast of every single piece of store on every single pediment well it looks to me like you've got your work cut out the job of cleaning all the pieces of this giant jigsaw is underway the foundations have been laid and the bricklayers have begun work many of the old bricks were too damaged to be reused so some new ones have been substituted in many ways all buildings are like giant jigsaw puzzles but where this one is special is that half the pieces are missing or broken like this so what Heston Derek and the team have got to do is not only put together hundreds of thousands of pieces in the right place they've got to find the missing pieces remake the molds to make the missing pieces put that all together get a hundreds of thousands of pieces in the right place and then make it look like a unified dignified home it's a enormous challenge but an intriguing one to put this building back together you first have to enter the mind of the man who built it one of the great pioneers of air travel [Music] airports in commonplace today there's something we take for granted that a hundred years ago the idea that you could jump on an airplane and fly to virtually anywhere in the world had barely entered the realm of science fiction but for one visionary flight opened up a world of possibilities the man with his eye on the future unbounded love of aircraft of the flamboyant wealthy car dealer could Claude Graham white he won a fortune in the early flying competition but his sights were firmly fixed on something even more ambitious good on a mission to inspire the nation with his dream for the future of air travel people at that time regarded a flying machine there's unlikely to beat in any way the future of transport I announced that I would take up seven passengers in the gram white flying shareable the flight was successfully made at Hendon not with seven but with nine passengers it's true that some of the passengers were simply perched on the wings there wasn't room for them all in the cockpit but I believe that someday there will be airliners settling the throne Lord Ram would always envisage that one day there would be international airlines circling this very building it might not look like it today but it was here that he nurtured his great dream of civil aviation in the off-site carpentry shop work is underway on the mammoth job of restoring the woodwork much of which was badly water damaged through decades of neglect so this a new window then master carpenter Ian fortune and his team will have their work cut out patching up the existing pieces as well as replacing all those that have vanished or beyond repair so what's that is that the stairs best part of the original staircase so that's all you know I sold an oaken in a terrible state isn't it yeah what's this let's part the paneling that come out of Graham White's office is it yeah Wow so that was all paneled out that was all paneled out something we've got a match and then this is the it's quite a simple balustrade isn't it it's quite simple better cytosine there's leopard nests of the staircase yeah all in oak that's just you know shows its period you're that Edwardian thing where they were starting to simplify some of the less fancy work disappearing I mean at the end of that was a work placement what about this took your fancy work that's one of the fates your windows are for the balcony these are something else aren't they it's quite a bit of work needed so these would have looked out onto the airfield that's right and suddenly you get a sense of what this building was about you know it's like Newbury racecourse it's like you know Henley Regatta it's almost like a sporting event isn't it suppose he he starts to understand that this building is really all about the spectacle of flight that's right include grand white stay the spectacle flight came to define Hendon in 1911 he transformed his airfield into a popular venue for pioneering air races and aerial displays that legacy lives on today the Shuttleworth collection daredevil pilot studied the loop and fragile period plays in the tradition of trained pilots my trained in my finds some of them were rather daring eager to show off all sorts of aerial stunts [Music] to world that have witnessed the Wright brothers first flight only eight years earlier these aerial antics was awesome as space travel is today my guides the daredevil topsy-turvy experience gram white called the Hendon habit his aviation historian Josh Levine it's probably difficult for us now to imagine the spectacle that this would have been in 1911 absolutely unheard on the idea of of going up flying through the air thousands and thousands of people would come along to watch it so Hendon at that time was really the greatest show on earth biggest show on earth it was a circus it was it was absolutely the place to be you know it was it was Lourdes it was London Zoo it was asked cause it was Henley it was it was glamour we also made the first parachute descent from an Arab name in flight mr. Newell the chapel dropped didn't have his parachute strapped on his back as they do nowadays but simply folded it up on his knee haphazard in a 3,000 feet he would have door with a hefty kick from behind very often people did crash one pilots who flew for gram white crashed at one of the displays he lost a leg he fashioned a leg for himself he created his own false leg in three months later he was flying again and that's the kind of people you had these these these were Daredevils you know this was a new breed these Airmen were great celebrities and he himself you know his wax workers in Madame Tussauds incredible yeah yeah that is real thing but it wasn't all thrills and spills was also key to demonstrate how powerful I could be deployed for military operations in May 19 Evan he's - Britain's first military air display inviting Winston Churchill and members of the Defense Ministry to this various site in Hendon oh wow look at this yeah this is Nick Graham lighting signal 19:15 so this is a few know the centerpiece was it doing yet and was this what you saw when you first yeah okay so I see wings obviously for a pain already had global ambitions its July the fourth month of the rebuild and while the badge of Graham White's global ambitions has scrubbed up well many of the other elements of the building have not this is an increasing problem for Heston whose employers are funding the operation as a rule were sort of poorly but jerry-built if you like building in lots of 1914-15 a lot of them is shot with sort of cross section on them you can see there's layers are layers of paint over them so is it going to be quite a difficult job to reconstruct it if all of the constituent parts are sort of so yeah it will be yeah there's a lot of details that particularly these heavy stones that are here and how they are originally supported quite poorly from the first floor through so we're gonna have a lot of fun in getting those who put up properly it's a very badly maybe put up rather quickly I think by an IV ITER not not build us but there was good reason why this building had to be put up so quickly and the clue is in the date of completion 1915 [Music] the previous year has seen outbreak of World War one the military thought this would be a war like any other but gram white knew only too well that new technologies were transforming the battlefield make him brutal and bloody and opening it up to the air three years earlier he shall have planes to be used for reconnaissance an aerial bombing it Britain loss to survive we have to renew his campaign to get the old guard up to speed with great reluctance he put his plans for civil aviation on hold handed their field over to the Admiralty and set out to build a warplane [Applause] in doing so fool gram white faced another problem because the government had imposed wartime restrictions on the supply of building materials not a man to be beaten he got in his car and travelled the country buying up timber and brick yards you can see here from the old brick created by hand around 1900s and what the water done is they would have made it up where the fingerprints would be left in the brick from lifting it so it would have been lifted and wanted to put into the oven and the oven would have cooked the fingerprints in place so it smiles to see something like that now you don't see that nowadays because machines have taken over basically in the choice of bricks for this building you get a sense of Claude the great hustler now I would imagine a building like this in this parlor world to be built of local materials which would mean London stocks hard-wearing yellow bricks made from London clay but it wasn't it was made of these soft Reds now these are made from Wheeldon clay that's not at a local clay which means that claude got all his bricks from over a hundred and thirty miles away during wartime he had a tougher problem sorting steel because most of that was on its way to munitions factories so he purchased a fleet of lorries and by providing his own transport he swayed the northern ironmasters into parting with the steel i-beams he needed to create this very modern steel structure the i-beam is a very clever piece of design and a structure this is that the principle of why it works and why it's so clever have you taken a ruler like this and imagine it's a beam and load it up it flexes quite easily but if you turn it on its edge like this it's incredibly stiff and a lot stronger and that's the principle of the Iping so an i-beam is a shape like this and what the thinking is is that all the work of beam is done in the top in the bottom if you imagine this is a slice through a long beam like that now if you imagine the amount of material to make a a meter section of that is the same as to make a square beam a square section like that so imagine these two or a meter long this one is 7.9 times stronger and over 29 times stiffer so you're making the least amount of material possible do the most amount of work you're optimizing the structure and I can imagine this would have really appeal to to Gram wipe the engineer and Aviator because that is what planes are about it's about making them as light as possible and as strong as possible and the implications of optimization on structuring of the i-beam has been as revolutionary for architecture as powered flight has been for Humanity but having gone to such trouble to scavenge I beams often used to build the latest skyscrapers it seems odd that Graham white then created a building rooted in the past not the future it seems to me that it's quite a mishmash it's so classically we'd imagine aircraft flight modernity and this is sort of Roman stuff and alongside classical architraves and window surrounds we have Elizabethan style bottle balustrade to find out what's going on I'm visiting the architects who drew up the plans for the rebuild their offices were designed around the same time now this is a proper architect building Boise 1904 beautiful with its modern styling this is a kind of thing I would expected Graham white to go for hopefully Anna and Windham will be able to tell me how he ended up with a retro building what really sort of find fascinating and also slightly frustrating is that you know we're starting to building here that's 1904 that's you know 1012 years earlier than this building yep this building is so much more modern than contemporary so we've gone backwards well as we approach the first world war there seems to be a sort of loss of nerve amongst architects and they sort of reverted back to older styles maybe Claud Graham like had the vision when it came to his aeroplanes but didn't know how to put it in terms of architectural styling and maybe the people around him that were guiding him with the initial ideas for the building weren't necessarily forward-thinking either at the time it had the grandeur of historical context had demonstrated elegance and class though without actually screaming out that he's trying to be controversial in any way Graham White was clearly complex and interesting man I wanted to find out more from someone who knew him firsthand I'd hope he'd have a surviving relative but it turns out he had no children despite having had three wives hello but the person I come to me to the British Library is the next best thing which gates the grandson of Richard Thomas Gates grandfather was the manager so I think program white was the entrepreneur one of the small photographs I've got here that's Claude gram white and my grandfather in an airplane they bought they both of them and particularly Claude gray and white as you see that it's got wake up English that was the big slogan wasn't it and they very much wanted people to realize that flying had a proper future Wow a blueprint a drawing oh my goodness military biplane oh look at that so they are thinking in military terms well as you can see on the photograph there but when the war starts nineteen in late 1914 what happens I mean your grandfather they should we will end up there in the frontal what what happened well both of them joined the Royal Naval Air Service and of course Navy was slightly more go ahead than the army because there's when the army was still thinking in terms of cavalry and what they then started doing out of Hendon aerodrome was defend bunting they went up together because there was a Zeppelin warning and landed safely at night and about three or four days later there was another Zeppelin warning but called gram white wasn't at the aerodrome at that time so grandfather went up on his own the airplane crashed I think my grandfather was probably the first airman to die in the first world war me gram white was devastated he'd lost his co-pilot and company manager but it didn't deflect him from his mission to convince the military that aircraft could play a vital role in the war and his new headquarters at Hendon became a showcase for that ambition now the period features are going back in I can at last understand what Graham White was up to with the design of this building it's a traditional facade disguising a modern internal structure but last we're starting to see the shape of this building you can understand what makes it so important it's built in in three sections the middle is a steel shed and at the back and at the front you've got brick bits that make it look posh that make it seem much more important than it really is much more special as you approach from the road you'd see this typical Georgian exterior with its porthole windows in classical architrave on entry you'd find yourself in this smart brick built vestibule but beyond that the working body of the building consisted of a modern unadorned and highly versatile steel structure but this was always hidden and the airfield end of the building was a two-story brick built section its facade laden with architectural details straight out of the style book of Old England it's an all fur coat and no knickers approach to building which is so ubiquitous today it's in all of those out-of-town shopping centres as office buildings those call centers but in 1915 this was revolutionary Graham White's architectural facades were I suspect parted strategy to get the old-school military authorities on board with a new technology by 1916 they'd finally woken up to the fact that aircraft had changed the rules of warfare forever each side was now engaged in a technological race to produce better than ever more deadly fighting machines many followed Graham White's example and hender became an important center for the manufacture of aircraft and aircraft components ninety-five years on little wonder the RAF Museum is pleased to have the great man's headquarters and watchtower rebuilt on the hand inside alongside is one remaining factory building so the museum's gearing up to take over the reconstructed watch tower building I'm meeting the director general of the Museum air vice-marshal Peter died well it allow us together with this building the gram white factory to tell the story of Graham white and his efforts here in the First World War what we intend to do is punch through the wall there where the watch tower is and then we'll have a much larger space which will be focused on the early history of aviation here and Graham white himself this means of course that Claud Graham white wrote last get his due he is of course one of the world's greatest pioneers of aviation a well known why no he isn't and that's something that we intend to put right I mean he was a leading figure at British aviation before the First World War he was seen as a hero he was as well known as Yuri Gagarin in his day but he was also a great propagandist he was a bit like Richard Branson he was seen as pushing the boundaries and then he was also a great persuader a great lobbyist he was the Jamie Oliver of aviation yes he was determined to to make people change their mind he was determined to influence politicians to ensure that they saw the value of aviation because this building are in this wonderful building dates horsewoman called grand why it's time as part of its factory what actually happened yes this was built in wartime this is where aircraft were built and in the watchtower alongside us was a drawing office where a lot of the plans were produced during the course of the war some 2,000 aircraft were built here to help win the war Fran white was meticulous of the way he built aircraft he was a crazed group to us and his treatment of his employees unlike so many wartime factories his were clean efficient well-ventilated and well lit he made a point of welcoming women to the factory floor and boasted and he could rely on them to perform well in the mail preserves of welding and woodwork [Music] sleeping cubicles were provided for those who had transport problems the work was hard and times were tough but he made sure the regular outings and sports events and here we have another grand white architectural innovation his dual purpose aircraft hangar come staffed tennis court at the start of the war employed just 70 people by 1915 that numbered swelled to over a thousand and by the time his photograph was taken in 1917 hit over 3,000 fully trained up happy factory workers and where are they standing in front of our building [Music] it's October 8 months into the reconstruction of the building and things have come on a long way since my last visit that is a building it's finally going together we have a look around there will show me a handiwork we have it's really coming on we have our original steel trusses here and that's amazing is that all this still work is more than a hundred years old you know you know it feels oh it could have been made last week at last the moment has come when the most iconic part of the building is flown back into position the crowning pinnacle of Graham White's HQ the great man's watchtower so do you think it's gonna fit well it's extremely nervous more than have my fingers crossed how we talk you measure four times the reason derrick is nervous is that the watchtowers corner posts must fit exactly into for supporting steel shoes which have already been concreted into the building [Music] it's actually very very big moment for us Charlie it's going to be a very significant part of the area now from a distance you're gonna see it from the North elevation you wanna see if when you're walking up it's like they're sort of the pinnacle of the external in structure the watchtower is now firmly in place but what was its purpose so what do you reckon the watchtower was for we just think it was just there for show really there's no actual functionality to it whatsoever so we'd guessed that from looking at the original building no used to it just just a folly really I think but was it just a folly or did Graham White have something else in mind for his watchtower did it have a function or was it simply for him to cast an eye over the aviation Empire he'd created evidence of Graham white Empire can still be found all around Hendon today and it's not just a street names heart a showcase factory still remain [Music] I'm standing on aerodrome Road which ran right to the center of Prayer White's factory indeed standing here during the war looking in that direction there will be factory buildings he started his road stretching as far as I could see I know over there just to my left while some the works canteen which had a welfare facility organized by Winston Churchill white very impressive few of the buildings survived though I must say there in front of me on the left the building that said he appeared today from the time of grey and white according to my plan the charming building was once the site of a garage with workers sleeping cubicles on the floor above Don it is one the original factory building third is two stories and sorrows and the wide opening now breaks half and beyond it was originally the wood store look at the charming double pitched Georgian style mansard roof the chimney stacks the cupola the lovely brickwork a wonderful piece of vernacular classical architecture but originally it didn't stand alone as now but formed the freight to whole range factory buildings if you look at this picture you can see rather like Graham wise HQ the brick part was a disguise for the modern industrial buildings behind I love about fair and wise is that at a time when the world was in turmoil he created a modern factory that was not monstrous and industrial in field but in its forms and details as comfortable and cozy as an English country village a walk-up aerodrome Road what was the harvest factory brings us to another charming outpost of Graham Weis vision of England where I'm standing now was the site of the Tea Room and the starting point for famous aerial races but June the First World War this happened the Tea Room was rebuilt in splendid near Tudor manor dated 1917 wonderful building very well preserved in tears also near Judah Jacoby's and style I love this staircase wonderful thing I suppose his historical style does appear to be a strange contrast to grandma's business as a designer of futuristic aeroplanes famous cutting-edge technology but this was the fashion of the time but most the point I think he would have thought this - the architecture offer a sense of solidity this was important at a time the world was changing fast and people needed something quintessentially British to hold on to none more so than the young pilots some just 17 years old who'd left help to come to Graham White's flying school at Hendon to face the perils of the aerial training it was a risky undertaking [Music] of the 14,000 pilot casualties of World War one a large percentage occurred while they were still at flying school [Music] many would have known this building because became the officers mess [Music] there is six weeks to go before Graham White's hqm Watchtower have to be handed over to the RAF Museum and there's still a lot to do replicating all the original quirks or dare I say faults has been a hugely time-consuming process though I have to admire the loving care and attention with which it's being done so your print works looking good isn't it yeah it's coming on very well Charlie would have liked that how about some dough this is little Flemish pond isn't it so long short long and here it goes short short short you've got real clusters of short yeah so it adds a nice bit of quirkiness to this and Terra slit and that was like that on the original bill cause it wasn't and the we've created it for a brick nice what do you think they they did that it's very very hard to know charlie possibly they had a load of half bricks instead of full breaks and it just decided to integrate it into the building and who knows you know maybe it was a shortage of supplies Jordan war either that were very artistic bricklayer well yes but it's not only the brickwork that's beginning to reveal its quirks everywhere the builders turn they discover puzzling irregularities the old grandstand windows I saw back at the beginning have now been fully restored and I'm ready to go back in place these are the ones that we saw sort of in terrible state how much have you managed to salvage from nearly all of it a good 80% of the primary mines but there's a bit of strangeness here in that one doesn't match the others so this is Leonard lights is it going in but they're not are they no so what happened that and now it's the turn of the original oak staircase it too is had the benefit of months of painstaking restoration but here we have a serious problem it has it so tightly at the bottom of the housing here I can people around there and a bit off here put simply in stares don't fit the old build it wasn't as straight as it should have been there was a lot hem work down on the state nice it could have been made on site and made to the shape of the building that's why I've had trouble it fitting into the new building because the new building square square and plowed it so the entire staircase we sort of made on the walk because the original field was at building was on the wall and so you had to sort of shufti over to get it fitting it ramped up in a square how we really explain it we could have replaced the whole staircases in the terrible mistake I think that the job was really to retain the history of the building so you can see that staircases else either we're on it the fact the stairs are on the skew has revealed something I really hadn't expected the watchtower the crowning pinnacle of this building is actually way off-center you could blame the war it wasn't a good time for building most of the nation's architects had been drafted into the engineering services and the youngest and best of Britain's labor force were fighting on the Western Front but in my efforts to establish who was responsible for the idiosyncrasies of Graham White's building I've made a rather interesting discovery and it comes to a magazine called flight and it's the the addition from from August 1917 and there is a headline here that says alien enemies at aerodrome ins by mr. George Farber and he asked the undersecretary for war where the German prisoners had been used at the Hendon aerodrome and he replied that the employment of German prisoners on the construction of aerodrome Xand sheds in the enlargement of existing establishments had been found necessary in order not to delay the completion Virgin Services I think in a very roundabout way he's saying yes that German prisoners of war are here at building stuff now I think we can't assume from that that POWs worked on our watchtower because the date on the front of the building is earlier but I think it it shows you how much pressure gram white must have been under to expand his operation to build more planes and what a disorientated experience for him because he was you know building things to kill Germans all day basically and incoming outside and seeing groups of them building his roads in expanding his empire building his buildings [Music] at our building nears completion I finally managed to track down someone who has a direct link to it 10 Pattinson grew up in Hendon yes he remembers having not one but two close relatives working in the gram white Factory during World War one said his wonderful family I hope I'm of Awesome's this niece is here your father tried a place in the front his sister may very strong character full faith she were as a fabrica she stitched the fabric around the fuselage of the plane yeah because they were wood Rhea was fabric but I believe the effect of the doping which when done afterwards made real dope was a varnish applied to the aircraft fabric to make it stiff and waterproof but it was dangerous stuff fumes from the solvents were known to be highly toxic say that the dopes the varnish affected her health and then she never really recovered them she did you have Morris but she could never have children now whether that was any result of that I feel I've seen her before because she said did you partly but no no no but now honestly it's um you're that it's Shawna's you're armed you haven't seen this picture I haven't seen that picture before now I do you think that's your honor I suppose peculiar isn't it their eyes it's disabled yeah there's an added danger of the head to degree yeah but she said here part of the drawing office there she is sitting the very drawing office in Graham wise HQ that we are rebuilding now she's not the only one of Ken patents and relatives who was busy working in the factory during the First World War so what else we had our betrayin what areas looking very dapper let's go he went as an apprentice just grime what company as an engine switcher come to my car what did your father think of Lord Graham white as an employer I think he respected him and what he respected most was but he he wanted perfection my father was like that and he learned that from Graham I'm sure in the light of what I just been told I was saddened to read the letter he then showed me which patents and senior was clearly being laid owing to the approaching termination of the existing contracts placed by the Ministry of munitions with us to manage from regret that it is necessary to reduce the hands in some of the departments be therefore regret having to dispense with your services so he's being made redundant it's clear from the letter the Graham White was forced lay off staff because of government miscalculations and the she having taken too long to engage with the war in the air the Ministry of supply then ordered more planes and in needed that orders are now being cancelled and manufacturers instructed to destroy existing stock compensation was not always forthcoming it was a bad time to be an aviation and now that work has finally started on the interior of Graham White's H cube I can begin to imagine the great man anxiously pacing around this building there's now only a month before the handover the windows are in and the building is waterproof and at last master carpenter Ian can get to work on Graham White's office I mean all the paneling here looks totally new yeah there's none none the Audrey tined there was one door that was plastered into the wall well she's probably where they got all these days house from the moulding day house restoring the oak paneling with nothing more to go on than one hidden door and this photo has clearly been a challenge I mean if you look at the wall it looks like an something stood out probably because the modules are the panels they're different sizes and that the wind is larger than their here I mean that says to me that the paneling is a total afterthought I pay my thing is and you've obviously replicated all of these mistakes yes [Laughter] that's virtually nothing remained of the original grand interior the architects have had to reconstruct every aspect of it from scratch not an easy task where nothing about this building quite adds up while the final touches are being applied to the building I've just made an unexpected find these papers originally came from Graham White's office and I have to say they have a rather shocking tale to tell when I started this research I expect you to find amongst other things I suppose a a list of the owners of water - Graham white butter other different saddest stories emerged while he offered advice informed advice to the government about and how to conduct the war in the air how to manufacture aeroplanes he was met increasingly and consistently by our got a wall of of I suppose having competence and an end and sort of them bureaucratic muddling the chat was clearly driven mad by these people forced in the end resigns commission even before the war ended Graham white was not only compelled to leave the military but asked to expand his Factory the compromise orders for more aircraft but they were then repeatedly withdrawn [Music] off the wall gray why not only face ruin but was show no gratitude for everything he's contributed to the war effort he tells us I could hardly believe that a British government could treat me a pioneer in such a harsh unsporting and unappreciative manner so why on earth will he treats her badly to find out I've asked historian Josh ravine so what went wrong the British military whether you're looking at the at the Army or the Navy British military is a very conservative institution and they don't trust a certain type of person he was a man who was irreverence he was free thinking I think it was it was a definite challenge to the way they viewed things and you get a sense of this actually when he was given his commission into the the Royal Naval Air Service he's shown up at Admiralty Arch met a man called Lord Edward Grosvenor and he was wearing spats and he was dressed up beautifully and he showed up and he presented himself in front of him Edward Grosvenor and he said to him look at me how is this will it do and Lord Edward Grosvenor looked at him and said my dear fellow you've forgotten just one thing the earrings and that gives you a sense of you know this man is a dandy this man is not quite one of us yes Claude Graham white even though he was from a good family he was a mechanic he was a man who liked getting his hands dirty who didn't mind showing up at a factory at 6 o'clock in the morning working through 8 o'clock at night and coming away with oil on his face but anybody of course it could be technical advance and pioneering with the you know aeroplanes but he was a very brave man he was an extraordinarily brave man and the fact is that they pushed him away they they repeatedly pushed him away when they should have relied on him more they actually showed him no respect and no thanks no gratitude for what he'd been doing for so many years the time has come to write a great wrong and put his name back on the National map of heroes whose shabby treatment of a man who'd led the country in the field of aerial combat who's thrown many perilous missions and trade many of the nation's famous fighter pilots who put his life's blood it's aerodrome at the service of his country for to maintain the highest standards and wartime manufacture and employment have all these sufferer hands the government he never stopped looking to the Future towards the end of the war in 1918 gram white then recovering from a nervous breakdown was a small sort of War Memorial there should be four Airmen who perished in the fighting his response was poignant and it was wise he said the finest War Memorial we can devise will be to pleasure selves to a vigorous development of Aeronautics that's on the foundations of their heroism can be built a great peace movement which will break down the barriers between nations and stimulate all that is best in relations of mankind stupendous [Music] kram White's building is also a memorial to the fallen pilots he never wavered in his conviction that the true role of aviation should be civil and peaceful he published proposals for chain of civil era dreams with aides for night flying and direction-finding demonstrated airlines could be reliable safe and profitable with all his brooding over this bold idea by pitch him in this builder bent over plans late into the night [Music] so here it is that the relocated and rebuilt Claude gram white headquarters there it was looking at they would have done when first constructed the building that should have been the nerve center of Britain's first international airport very English was quintessentially English and actually sort of quite playful I can imagine it on a race course or or by the Thames that Henley sort of grandstand meets pavilion absolutely it's very um calculated to impress makings of heavy point about the importance of them of him in his company and the balustrade is like it's from some Paul's Cathedral I can already see the buildings are striking testimony to Claude Graham white when people land on the airfield or came from the earth or they would have been received here and so you're the Posche front of the building sits here next to the airfield but who come with me from the reception the world of Graham white the entrepreneur and campaigner we moved the world of dream white the innovator is is the business end of the building this is the heart and soul of the whole operation in many ways and this was the drawing office this is the way he would have done up his plans for Britain's first airliners and airports and in those days as you approach through the reception area your eye would have been drawn to this there's a fuse box isn't it chlorophyll it is I mean it is a fuse box but you can see the drawn very sort of circuits it sort of sums up for my from in so many ways in his attitude you know he's fetishizing technology we've got the latest of 20th century technologies surrounded by a piece of furniture which is looking back to the Romans to show and give it gravitas you can trust this this is this is trust a more dependable technology Israel Israel the way very modernist is almost expression of power of Neptune wealth of the practical aspect of the factory may make me make a virtue may can almond of it when he's got noticeboards right next I mean it really is I think a conscious yet he wants people to say this is the future he's my future welcome to it that's exactly what he's about as near display of the future for his visitors these are the stairs to Mission Control you can imagine Graham white leading government officials and politicians maybe even Church himself appear to try and persuade them of the advantages of powered flight this is the inner sanctum feel like this is this is awesome heavens this is absolutely smooshing uncanny is war familiar I feel I've seen before and wrinkles and where have with our impressive at first sight I found a surprisingly dark and old-fashioned almost oppressive Lisa they've really gone into detail but not anything little convincing in its details based on photographs better atmosphere everything about this office speaks for man straining to impress the man will go to any lengths to win over the old guard you can imagine him rolling out his plans for airports aides for night flying and his grand vision for the people's airlines such a insights into the madness isn't it the way this chat running into oddly futuristic factory looking to the future aviation but he had to made that acceptable he felt it necessary to be surrounded by history in this way gave him the right gravitas right status but there's one important bit of this building that was neither status seeking nor dripping in historical detail the room at the top of the great man's watchtower what do we think this watchtower was it was really youthful we now know that it wasn't actually built at the same time as the head office here it was built sometime afterwards round about 1919 you look around and it's got a tremendous you know perspective over the entire site there was a vantage point a viewing platform but then also without realizing it sort of creates the prototype the control tower so we'd like to think that it was very much part of that ambitious gray and white he was finding his feet again after the war he was looking to the future and the watch day in the way symbolizes that ambition drei white the man of vision never got the recognition in his lifetime he so richly deserved but almost a hundred years to the day since he first arrived in Hendon the local people have turned out to celebrate the return of a local hero a hero immortalized is a wonderful resurrected building that has even been given the world steel the truth welcome you here today to the spool and baling of the great whites watch office [Music] ah guys there you are thank you what can I say it looks fantastic there must be the the best-built jerry-built building in history we certainly will be in this time it will last unlike the original construction it's it's given us an unbelievable feeling of pride in constructing this building Charlie it's it's turned out really well it was so happy with it and we hope that a great man if he did come back would be who would love it I think if he was with us today Capgras mighty he would really be really stunned Anthony Reid and very proud it's a practical building but it's got that edge that flamboyance that the man quite clearly had she was a very kind person she would help anybody I was very fun yes she made a fuss of me I must have been I'm very proud of her being part of all this and I can't help thinking gram white would be delighted to see what was happening in his building today gram white the employer the educator the visionary always looking to the future and here we have the future the young people of Hendon getting excited by and drawing inspiration from his building and his vision for all his Drive for all his dedication gram white never realized his dream of putting handle at the center of the development of global air travel when the war ended the gully were a future turns airfield to him if that wasn't enough the lay still possession of his entire Factory he took proceedings against the Treasury and was eventually awarded compensation but by then he was too disheartened to returns the business of aviation a tragedy for Hendon and for Britain when I first saw the jigsaw puzzle the fragments of this building I never really imagined that in putting it back together we would build up such a rich and complex picture of a man but then again buildings are all about people and no matter how grand or humble they all have stories to tell Claude and white came close to being airbrushed out of history was almost a forgotten man but in saving and reconstructing this building all that he did is now enshrined in bricks and mortar surely there could be no better no more inspirational monument to bear light in his building because it embodies the man himself and his vision of aviation [Music] you [Music] [Music]

Channel: Banijay History

Views: 28,456

Keywords: history, facts, interesting, history documentary, documentary history, history channel, ancient, world history, full documentary, top documentaries, documentaire, documental, documentary film, free documentary, full length documentaries, documentaries, factual, documentary full, history shows, history channel shows, restoration, restore

Id: nN3RVEs5MV4

Length: 58min 51sec (3531 seconds)

Published: Sat May 09 2020