The Whittle Roundabout

Sir Frank Whittle

The Whittle Roundabout

Frank Whittle, inventor of the jet engine, developed some of the world's first jet engines at the British Thomson-Houston works in Lutterworth, and in nearby Rugby, during the late 1930s and the 1940s. The engine for the UK's first jet aeroplane, the Gloster E.28/39, was produced in Lutterworth. A statue of the plane stands in the middle of a roundabout just south of the town as a memorial.
For many years there was a pub on Leicester Road called "The Frank Whittle", one demolished in the 1990s. In the centre of the town on the Greenacres estate, the public house previously known as "The Balloon" has been renamed as "The Sir Frank Whittle".