Large Bi-plane stranded near Furtherwick Farm

From George Chambers Collection

This is another old Canvey photo contributed to the Archive by George Chambers.

When George, at approx 12 years old, returned from his annual 2 weeks holiday in Ilford he was surprised to see this large bi-plane parked in the fields opposite Furtherwick Farm (probably where King George’s playing fields are today). George says it was there a couple of days, probabably awaiting parts, and he remembers it taking off in a northerly direction, just skimming the Canvey Supply clock-tower. He says it was certainly a lot bigger than the usual planes used for the joy-flights!

On another occasion he remembered standing at the back-door of his Grandfather’s house ‘Maisonwyck’ and seeing one of the joy-flight planes have a ‘prang’ ending nose-down in the fields behind (just about where the end of the Parkway/Driveway is now). By the afternoon they’d staightened it out and it was up doing joy-rides again!

Comments about this page

  • The ‘plane in the picture is an Armstrong-Whitworth Argosy, an Imperial Airways (the precursor to BA) airliner from the late 1920s. My guess is that it’s the one which flew the ‘Silver Wing’ London-Paris route.

    By Nick Rutter (06/05/2010)
  • Hi. The Argosy aircraft shown was G-EBLF first registered to Imperial Airways on 16-5-1925 and withdrawn from use or destroyed on ?-12-34. Could this be due to its forced landing on Canvey? Regards Sparrow

    By sparrow (01/05/2011)

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