End of an Era

I took several pictures for today's blip (including one about The World ending at 11:12 this morning) before finding this one. Perhaps it did, The Old Lady's early morning carer didn't arrive, I managed to get her up and dressed with out too much embarrassment to either party but, she was a dirty girl all day; took her to a weekly coffee morning, cancelled today due to the impending Christmas and finally, the bed-time carer announced that TOL hadn't been able to find any knickers this morning so hadn't worn any!

Now for a bit of history....

Filton Airfield was built in the very early days of aviation by the Bristol Aeroplane Company (BAC). While I was still a babe-in-arms the runway was extended to accommodate the newly designed Brabazon airliner. This white elephant was, appropriately, the size of a Jumbo Jet but was only intended to carry 100 passengers; since only rich people flew it was deemed necessary to build in both a cinema and a restaurant!
To create space for the runway, the village of Charlton was demolished together with the Carpenter's Arms, a pub that TOL and Mr TOL frequented during their courting days. To the best of my knowledge, Mr TOL wrote the maintenance manual for the monster aircraft although it was never maintained as it was not developed beyond the prototype stage.
Later, the runway was further extended for the benefit of Concorde, designed jointly by what was then known as the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) together with Aérospatiale. I'm afraid that the maintenance manual was again written by Mr TOL.
BAC did manage to produce some fine aircraft but was always hampered by a limited production capacity.

You can find out more about the Brab here
and the airfield here

History lesson completed.