Brooklands was a well-known place; large crowds of people had often visited it to see the motor races; and it was near London; so that from the first it attracted sportsmen and aeroplane designers. It became the experimental ground of the British aircraft industry. Among its early tenants were the British and Colonial Aeroplane Company, founded by the late Sir George White of Bristol, and commonly known as the Bristol Company; Messrs. Martin and Handasyde, the makers of the Martinsyde machines; Mr. A. V. Roe; the Scottish Aviation Company, with their Avis monoplanes; Mr. J. V. Neal, who, in the endeavour to avoid the Wrights' patents, produced a curious biplane with a new system of control, and many others. Sheds were occupied by Mr. Douglas Graham Gilmour, one of the finest pilots in his day that this country had produced, who was killed in an accident at Richmond, and by Mr. F. P. Raynham, who became notable as a test-pilot. Many sportsmen rented sheds and tried their hands at building machines. Mrs. Hewlett, the wife of the novelist, having learned to fly, started a school at Brooklands in partnership with M. Blondeau, a French engineer and pilot. Her son, like the swallows, was taught to fly by his mother. By the middle of 1911 a whole village of sheds had grown up. Most of the tenants were men of means, but they spent so much money on their experiments that they had very little left for the amenities of life. Mr. C. G. Grey remembers men, the possessors of comfortable incomes, who lived for years on thirty or forty shillings a week, and spent the rest on their aeroplanes. It was a society like the early Christians; it practised fellowship and community of goods. To the eyes of a casual visitor there was no apparent difference between the owner of an aeroplane and his mechanics; all alike lived in overalls, except in hot weather, when overalls gave place to pyjamas. If any one lacked tools or materials he borrowed them from another shed; they were lent with goodwill, though the owner knew that his only chance of seeing them again was to borrow them back. The social centre of the place was a shed in the middle of the front row, which was let by Major Lindsay Lloyd as a restaurant, and was called 'The Blue Bird'. This restaurant was run by the wife of one of the community; it united in itself all the utilities of a public-house, a club, a parliament, and a town-hall. Living as they did for ends of their own and apart from the great world, the brotherhood naturally took pride in themselves as a chosen people, dedicated to high purposes, and they scorned the Philistines who came in crowds to see the motor racing. On race days the Philistines were permitted, for reasons connected with the balance sheet, to have tea at 'The Blue Bird'; some of them would wander over the aerodrome, and even into the sheds, to ask the sort of question that is often asked by those who will not undertake the