Dean’s plane crazy garden ornament
THE cockpit of an aeroplane once owned by Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor and the Saudi billionnaire father of Osama Bin Laden has been found sitting in a Port Talbot garden.
Rhiannon Reynolds has the threetonne piece of 1960s Dominie 125 Hawker aircraft decorating her decking area in Brahms Avenue, thanks to her aviation enthusiast fiancée Dean Smith.
Forty-one-year-old Mr Smith, of Porthcawl, travelled to Yorkshire to buy the cockpit for £5,000 after he found out it was being sold by Doncaster Aviation Museum.
It was once owned by Hollywood actors Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, as well as Saudi billionaire Mohammed Bin Awad Bin Laden, the father of terrorist Osama Bin Laden.
And it was quite a challenge transporting it back to south Wales.
Mr Davies explained: “I have always been into aircrafts and the RAF, and knew I was going to get a cockpit from a very young age. I was always going to get something exRAF.
“It is a bit like people who are into classic cars, in middle England you would see this quite regularly, but in south Wales it is quite rare.
“These things are hard to come by and you’ve got to be ready when the opportunity comes.
“A friend of mine has an old burger trailer which we reinforced it and took that to Doncaster. It took us 12 hours to get it [the cockpit] back, we had to stop every five minutes and tighten the strap.
“On our way back we had hundreds of cars behind us all taking photos. There was one guy who overtook seven times to take photos! I didn’t expect this sort of reaction as I’ve been around this sort of thing all of my life, but looking at it from a different point of view, if you were coming back from Tesco and saw a jet on the side of a car it would be an eyeopener.”
Mr Smith received help from neighbours to get it into Ms Reynolds’s garden.
He said: “We had to close the road, and had to ask permission to use other people’s driveways. Everybody got out and helped. We needed the neighbours on board and made them teas and coffees.
“It caused quite a buzz in the area. One man said he might leave his landing light on in case he sees any more planes.
“It’s an end-terrace house, and asking a two litre Citroen Picasso to pull three tonnes up a ramp wasn’t the easiest job. We begged, stole and borrowed, and on a wing and a prayer we got it into the garden. I pulled my tendons in the process. I was glad to have a cup of tea at the end of it.”
Explaining how Ms Reynolds reacted to having a cockpit in her garden, he said: “It’s really a boy’s toy in the garden.
“We had been going out for nearly four years and I’ve managed to get her dressed up in the uniform and things like that, so thought I’d be in with a good chance for this. I told her one day, I’m going to need your garden, I’m going to get this plane. It’s been a wonderful thing and has brought our families together.”