Hilda Hewlett- first female licenced pilot and aeroplane manufacturer based in Battersea 1912-1914 plaque unveiled

Hilda Hewlett was the first woman to qualify as a pilot in the UK.  She was a pioneering aviator and part of the military-production machine in the Great War. In 1912 in Battersea she, with Gustave Blondeau, opened their factory to build the BE2 planes for the Royal Aircraft factory.  

Gail Hewlett,  the biographer and grand daughter-in-law of Hilda, came to give a talk on her at the AGM of The Battersea society on the 24th March 2015. It was very well received and some of her books were sold and signed and  it was announced that there  would be a plaque erected at the site at 4 Vardens Road commemorating Hilda Hewlett which is wonderful.

The plaque was unveiled by Pauline Vahey Chairwoman of the British Women Pilots’ Association of a plaque commemorating Hilda Hewlett at 4 Vardens Road London SW11 on Saturday 19th September 2015.

Picture for her license

UNVEILING OF PLAQUE TO HILDA HEWLETT

It was a lovely sunny Saturday morning. There were about forty people attending including the Mayor Cllr Nardelli, Jane Ellison MP, representative from various societies, a historian from Royal Aeronautical Society, Hewlett family, the owners of number 4 the Jeffreys and neighbours. It was very much a female presentation Sara, Chair of the Battersea Society, Pauline unveiled and spoke about Hilda reminding us how extraordinary she was for the time and that she had to do it wearing skirts and a maintaining a hairdo.

Gail, her biographer made sure everyone present knew a lot more about the irrepressible Mrs Hewlett and I read an extract that mentioned the story of the Kings visit to the aero show when Hilda was treated with suspicion because of suffragette activity at that time and how it made her angry. She said she was too feminine to use their tactics because ‘she couldn’t kick or bite’

‘I sat in the darkest corner with Kroshka (her Great Dane) and thought of flying the Farman at dawn, dipping to meet my shadow aeroplane on the wet grass, the river all gold, partridges and rabbits just waking up, frightened at the noise . I had my reward, I was happy in my work, and happy in my friends. What did I care for glory or what people thought? I forgave the Suffragette’s, the police and public opinion . I drove back to Vardens Road and tea at Mrs Stiff’s.’

We had refreshments at the Plough pub nearby afterwards. A great success and I will take some credit for making it happen.

Gail has carried out exhaustive research into the lives of both Hilda and Maurice Hewlett and published the results of this work.  The book was officially launched on 26th April 2010 at St Peter’s Church in Vauxhall London.     Old Bird. The Irrepressible Mrs Hewlett – Troubador Publishing.

Hilda Beatrice Hewlett was born in 1864, the daughter of Rev George W Herbert, the vicar of St Peter’s Vauxhall, and his wife Louisa. She was one of eight children (one of whom had died age 3). She attended the National Art Training School in South Kensington where she specialised in woodwork, metalwork and needlework; three skills that served her well in her later aviation career. She spent time in Egypt with her parents when she was 19 and then at 21 trained as a nurse for a year at a hospital in Berlin. She was a fluent French speaker. Apparently, she only spoke French to Gustave.

After marrying Maurice Hewlett in 1888, they wound up living in Northwick Terrace, just of Edgware Road, and she became a keen motorist.  Maurice Hewlett was a romantic novelist. The couple had two children, a daughter, Pia, and a son, Francis usually called Cecco. They grew apart and separated sometime after 1914 but remained friends.  Maurice has unfairly been described as unsympathetic to Hilda’s exploits as an aviator. According to Gail he did not at first understand why Hilda, who was known as Billy within the family, was interested in what seemed a new-fangled thing, but he never ever tried to stop her.  What concern he showed was to do with the danger inherent in flying. He was later to invest in the Hewlett & Blondeau company. Hilda said: ‘Maurice was so broadminded about my flying’.

Maurice was a lawyer and had been a partner in his family’s law firm and keeper of land revenue records. However, in 1901, three years after writing a successful romantic novel, he gave up his profession for a literary career. You get the picture he a romantic novelist and she the action adventurer who had advanced from cycling , to cars and then aeroplanes. 

  

In 1906 she was the passenger/mechanic for Miss Hind, the only female driver in the Land’s End to John O’Groats. At a 1909 event in Blackpool, she met Frenchman Gustave Blondeau with whom she developed a fascination with flying. She had to go to France and buy a plane before she could learn to fly.

After buying an aeroplane and learning how to maintain it, Hewlett and Blondeau set up one of Britain’s first fully-fledged flying schools at Brooklands race track and airfield. One of their first pupils was Sopwith, whose company built the famous Great War fighter plane, the Sopwith Camel, but whose first flight was with Gustave Blondeau.

Another pupil was Hewlett herself, who became the first woman ever to qualify as a pilot in the UK, with Royal Aero Club license number 122, issued on 29 August 1911. Hilda Hewlett’s pilot’s licence photo, showing her amazing hair and hat combination. Hilda also taught her son Francis who earned his license number 156 on 14 November 1911 and went on to have a distinguished military aviation career in both the UK and New Zealand, making him the first military pilot taught to fly by his mother. He earned a Distinguished Service Order in 1915 and rose to the rank of Group Captain.

Hilda describes their Brooklands environment as an informal place, with impecunious flying enthusiasts sleeping in packing crates outside the hangar. “We lived a curious communal life,” Hewlett writes, “with aviation shop talked day and night, in season and out of season.”

“We bought an acetylene welding plant, with which Gustave did wonders. That paid for itself in no time, it was the first of its kind in England.”

Aviators, aeroplane constructors and even motorists came to the workshop. “They seemed to think anything could be mended, even the most impossible things, by this new invention.”

Soon after this, Hewlett and Blondeau went into business building aeroplanes. They opened a factory in Battersea in 1912. . They were awarded a contract to build BE2 biplanes for the Royal Aircraft Factory. The first factory called Omnia Works was a disused ice-skating rink which had been had been used by the car firm Mulliners who had briefly gone into aeroplane building.                                                          

This was at 2-16 Vardens Road, off St John’s Hill near Clapham Junction. I remember it when it was a snooker Hall as we lived nearby in St John’s Hill Grove in the mid 60s., where eventually they produced six different types of aircraft. By December 1912 they had built three French Hanriot monoplanes.

The blog piece  Before Amelia: Women Pilots in the Early Days of Aviation quotes from Gail biography some interesting details about Hilda and the trade unions and that Hilda had a flat at 34 Park Mansions on Prince of Wales Drive near Battersea Park whilst they had the factory and how her dog Kroshka would run alongside her Daimler when she drove up to Vardens Road.

Omnia Works Vardens Road SW11

Finally they settled on a 10 acre site at Leagrave Bedfordshire, in May 1914. By August 1914 the company had produced 6 different types all at Vardens Road and had produced eight other types at Leagrave. During the war the Hewlett’s company manufactured more than 800 military aircraft and and employed up to 700 people. Hewlett and Blondeau made all their own parts and supplied other companies with parts, but they did not make aircraft engines and electrical instruments. Here Hilda was a familiar sight driving her large car with a big dog in the back.

Hilda in the Daimler with Kroshka

The firm developed a good reputation and was very successful.

After the war the business diversified into making farming equipment, but the factory had closed by the end of October 1920. The site remained unsold until 1926. A road in Luton, Hewlett Road, was named after her in recognition of the importance of the company towards the war effort.

Hilda had set a training school for girls and women in  skills which had been undertaken by men especially welding. Hilda had first hand experience of it a generation before Rosie the Riveter. Hilda was described as an ‘indefatigable worker, good organiser and shrewd business woman’.

After the factory closed down in 1926, she went to New Zealand joining her daughter and her son joined them later. As Hilda explained;  ‘the urge to escape from the three C’s, crowds, convention and civilization became strong’.  According to the website Hewlett, Hilda Beatrice – Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand   “New Zealand also offered Hilda opportunities to camp and fish, other long-time interests. Now 62, she was always addressed as ‘Old Bird’ by family members. It also mentioned that In 1934 Jean Batten, touring New Zealand after her celebrated flight from England to Australia, was welcomed to Tauranga and hosted by Hewlett. The meeting of the two pioneers from different eras was said to have ’caused quite a stir’.

She lived out the last decades of her life in Tauranga, NZ, including being the first president of their Aero and Gliding Club. She died in 1943 and was buried at sea, as she had wished.

I relished reading Hilda’s biography which included quotes from he r unpublished memoirs. Gail  described Hilda as” brisk, bracing, intelligent,impatient, intrepid, – excellent qualities in a friend or travelling companion; hardy, energetic and fun-loving – frivolous she would call it; determined and single-minded, more than a little self-centred; not at all prudish, except in matters governed by her own strong moral code and brand of snobbery; warmly affectionate, coldly intolerant , Billy to Old Bird endeared or alienated herself in equal measure.”

Hilda Hewlett is featured in my Inspiring Battersea Women which is due out in June 2022. I was delighted with this this video by World Heart Beat Music Academy Nine Elms Sessions  was produced celebrating our Hilda.  I had a long chat with Nick Cohen the producer about Battersea heritage but you never how this can manifest itself. 

It is also important to note here how Battersea has a fascinating aviation connection because alongside Hilda Hewlett and Gustave Blondeau were the Short Brothers who have had a Blue Plaque commemorating them.

This plaque was unveiled September 2013 in Battersea under the arches at Queenstown Road/Queens Circus.

Britain’s first aircraft manufacturers, Horace, Eustace and Oswald Short have been commemorated with an English Heritage Blue Plaque at their former workshop in the railway arches by Queen’s Circus, Battersea. The plaque was unveiled by Jenny Body OBE, the first female President of the Royal Aeronautical Society, at 2pm on Tuesday 17th September.