Summary (by AI): I was pleasantly surprised to discover the Museum of Berkshire Aviation in Woodley, a fascinating place that filled me with a sense of local pride and appreciation for its rich history.
Blog: About a twenty-minute drive from where I live is a town called Woodley. There is a Screwfix there, and I go to it all the time. Today, I realized that for all the times I’ve been driving to this Screwfix in Woodley, I’ve actually been driving right through some of the most incredible aviation history in the country.
Just around the corner from the Screwfix is the Museum of Berkshire Aviation. I’ve seen it a few times and peeked in as I’ve driven past, catching a glimpse of what I think is an old de Havilland on the outside. I always thought, That’s interesting, I bet some blokes have just collected a few old planes and put them there. But as it turns out, it is far more interesting than that—and incredibly poignant to Berkshire. It is almost the perfect example of what a county museum should be.
Basically, this whole area used to be an airfield. At one point, I think it was called the Reading Aerodrome, and then it became Woodley Aerodrome. It was the home of a company called Miles Aircraft. The company was started by a couple of brothers back in the 1920s, and they basically just started building planes.
In those days, the only people who could afford planes—well, even now, really—were the ultra-rich. Today, we all travel on planes, but back then, the only people flying were those who could get hold of their own private aircraft. Because of this, the aerodrome became a place of pilgrimage for anyone wealthy enough to own a plane. The brothers went through various iterations of building actual aircraft, doing a massive amount of design work right there on-site. Intriguingly, they used to build their initial planes out of wood instead of metal, and that whole process became known as the Berkshire design process.
Then along came the Second World War, and that’s when the whole place truly took off. The technology, infrastructure, and expertise these guys had at Miles Aircraft helped see them through the war. The entire operation expanded exponentially. I saw some aerial photos at the museum showing the sheer size of the operation; they actually ended up with about 8,000 people working there during the war and shortly after. It was a real, genuine aircraft company. Who knows? It could have been the next Boeing.
But it didn't end up being the next Boeing, and there is a sad story about the latter end of the war. One of the brothers was trying to develop an aircraft to break the sound barrier: the Miles M.52. He was very close to doing it, building a jet-engine prototype with incredibly narrow, thin wings. But someone from the British government found out about it and, for a variety of reasons, said, "No, you can't do that. It's going to be way too dangerous." They were terrified of pilots being killed, so they forced the company to stop.
To make matters worse, they also forced the company to hand over all of their intellectual property and technology to the Americans—specifically to the Bell Aircraft Company. Bell built the XS-1 (the Bell X-1) off the back of that research, which became the first plane to ever break the sound barrier. Arguably, that historic American achievement was only one step away from the plans and prototype already built by the Miles brothers in Berkshire.
Despite the tragic ending to that project, it is a fantastic museum. I turned up on a lovely, quiet Wednesday in the middle of May—one of the great perks of being retired! The museum is run entirely by volunteers, and I was guided through the first section by an absolutely lovely chappie who must have been about 75. He was incredibly passionate about the museum and the exhibits, which made it brilliant fun.
I had a great time, but there were two final things that really blew me away.
First, I had no idea that Woodley played a role in the invention of the ballpoint pen. During the war, the government was getting fed up with pilots having issues with their fountain pens leaking at high altitudes. The engineers at the Woodley factory had read about the invention of László Bíró, a Hungarian living in Argentina, who had patented the concept of the ballpoint pen. Because of the Miles factory’s incredible expertise in high-precision engineering and machining, they collaborated with Bíró and became the official UK factory for Biro pens. After the war, when aircraft production was fortunately no longer needed at wartime levels, they pivoted and became a full-blown Biro company. I thought that was absolutely fantastic, and there’s a whole exhibition dedicated to it inside the museum.
The second thing was a really simple, straightforward little exhibit. It was a model aeroplane held on a rotating stick. When you pressed a button, the little propeller started spinning, and the force of it began pulling the plane around in a circle. I watched it and thought, Hang on, is this thing actually going to take off? And after a few seconds, it actually did! It was just a simple little toy plane with a tiny propeller, but it generated enough lift to take off and fly in its little circle. It was so simple, yet really impressive to see.
I definitely recommend a visit. In fact, I think I’m going to have to bring my dad here next time—he’s a real plane buff, and he'd love it.
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