Hovercraft Inventor To Be Honoured

Hovercraft Inventor To Be Honoured.

THE HOVERCRAFT CELEBRATORY COLUMN

Sir Christopher CockerellChristopher Cockerell the inventor of the hovercraft is to be honoured in the Somerleyton, village where it was conceived

The column will be unveiled by Sir Christopher Cockerell’s daughter, Frances, on the centenary of his birth at 2.30pm on Friday 4th June.

The hovercraft was invented by Sir Christopher Cockerell whilst he owned and worked at Ripplecraft, the boatyard in Somerleyton. From 1953 to 1956 as well as designing and building hire craft for the Broads Sir Christopher “worked on the problem of making boats go faster”. He was attempting to make boat propulsion more energy efficient and one of his experiments was to inject air under the hull of his launch Spray. From this work he developed a working hovercraft model. Unable to take the development further without aid Sir Christopher demonstrated the model to Lord Somerleyton on the lawn at Somerleyton Hall. Lord Somerleyton was impressed and arranged for Sir Christopher to demonstrate the model to Lord Mountbatten who was First Lord of the Admiralty at the time. Eventually the National Research & Development Corporation backed the project, Sir Christopher and his family moved to the South Coast and the prototype SR-N1 was built and crossed the English Channel on 25th July 1959 to widespread acclaim.

The Somerleyton Estate where the Hovercraft was invented has a long and distinguished past associated with self motivated men of science and industry, right back to the industrial revolution period that made Britain a great world power. Both Somerleyton Hall and its garden are Grade II* listed by English Heritage and are open to the public, please follow this link towww.somerleyton.co.uk

Very few public memorials in England are dedicated to great engineers or their works and a small group of people brought together by Lord Somerleyton, decided to raise a fitting Landmark at Somerleyton in Suffolk to identify it as the birthplace of the Hovercraft, and as a tribute to the inventiveness of Sir Christopher Cockerell.The Hovercraft Column was designed by James Airy ARIBA and completely fits the village scene and vista while providing for a bronze identical in scale to the original prototype model. It stands beside the main road (B1074) between St Olaves and Lowestoft.