Flying the flag

HISTORIC ENGLAND has announced 14 new and upgraded listings to mark the centenary of the formation of the Royal Air Force on April 1 (‘Flying high’, page 134). A memorial to the most decorated British pilot of the First World War, James Mccudden, and his three brothers, at Chatham, has been newly listed as Grade II, as has Swinstry Cross, near Egton Bridge, evocatively located on the Yorkshire Moors to mark the crash site of 19-year-old Francis Titcomb. He died from injuries after he came down on his first solo training flight from Redcar Aerodrome in 1917.

The most striking of all the memorials, upgraded from Grade II to II*, is the Aviator’s Memorial at Eastchurch, Kent, with its figures of Zeus and an airman’s head in full flying gear and its detailed reliefs of early aircraft and aviators. Another airman looks skywards in Stanley Park, Merseyside (right).

Formed via the amalgamation of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS), the RAF became the world’s first air force run independently from navy or army command. It came at the tail end of the First World War, which brought a growing recognition of the contribution air power could make to the defence of the nation.

At the outbreak of war, the combined aircraft of the RFC and the RNAS amounted to less than 2,000. By November 1918, the RAF had 22,000 aircraft and recorded air casualties across the war stand at more than 14,000. Jack Watkins

Best foot forward: this colossal marble appendage, over 3ft long and thought to have been originally part of a 36ft-tall Greek deity, has hopped back to Chatsworth, Derbyshire, which opened earlier this week after months of conservation ahead of the...