Chingford's associations with aviation go back to the earliest years of the 20th Century. Indeed early British pioneer A.V. Roe  built and flew one of his earliest  aircraft here. One of the earliest World War 1 RNAS Royal Naval Air Stations was located at what became the William Girling Resevoir very close to todays RAFA Chingford location.

 

According to an account in the Journal of the Fleet Arm Association, 2005-2006, Number 15, of Henry Allingham who was based at RNAS Chingford as an Air Mechanic (2nd class) from 1915,  "Chingford was  not an ideal airfield for those learning to fly, there were numerous boarded over streams, using railway sleepers.  If one was taking off in a northerly direction... there the chance of a dunking in the the then existing resevoir just beyond the hangars" (Engine reliability being a major problem at that time.)  A  pupil pilot at RNAS Chingford in 1915 was a 22 year old Sub-Lieutenant called David Ivor Davies, better known as Ivor Novello. 

 

An early trainee pilot at RNAS Chingford was Canadian Roy Brown who would later be credited with shooting down the leading German Air ace Manfred Freiherr  von Richthofen.

 

In the post-war period in 1932 the famous pilot Sir Alan Cobham brought his Flying Circus to Chingford. In 1936 construction began of the William Girling Resevoir..

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