Richard H. Barnwell

  General Notes:

Records of Fairfield Shipbuilding & Engineering Co Ltd, shipbuilders and engineers, Govan, Glasgow, Scotland (excerpt).

William Pearce was elected conservative MP for the Govan division of Lanarkshire. On account of his frequent absences from Glasgow as a result of his new responsibilities, Richard Barnwell was taken on as a junior partner to assist in the day-to-day management of the business.

About a year later, in 1886, the firm became a limited liability company under the name of Fairfield Shipbuilding & Engineering Co Ltd. At this point, the company was amongst the largest shipyards on the Clyde. In the early 1880s the average workforce in the Govan yard was 5,000. Pearce, who was created a baronet in 1887 for his services to naval shipbuilding, died in 1888.

http://www.archives.gla.ac.uk/collects/catalog/ugd/001-050/ugd039.html


Those 'Magificent Men', the Barnwell Brothers - aviation pioneers

Balfron boasts innovation in another more unexpected form of transport.

Richard H. Barnwell, managing director of Fairfields, the Govan shipbuilders, lived at Auchendarroch around the beginning of the century. However, it is not Mr Barnwell's association with the sea which is significant, but his sons' preoccupation with aviation which links Balfron with those "magnificent men", the early pioneers of flight.

It is hard to envisage, as we picture the horse and cart turning in the cobbled Buchanan Street of the 1900s, the sight of the experimental gliders and engine-powered aircraft struggling into the sky to the south of the village as young Harold and Frank Barnwell began their life-long love affair with "flying machines" in the grounds of the Elcho House, their family home until 1905.

http://www.balfronheritage.org.uk/history

It appears that Richard was a Mason, being listed as a former 'Grand Bible Bearer' in the Glasgow Herald (6th Nov 1888).

Richard was also a director of the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company.

When he died Richard left an estate valued at £82,538 a sum equivalent to £7,500,000 today (2009).


THE SCOTSMAN

The hardest yards

Published Date: 28 July 2009
By Jim Gilchrist

WHEN the engine was started, the aeroplane, like some huge white-winged bird, rushed forward and with a rapid sweep rose into the air.
The nose was pointed at a very high angle, and after travelling about 80 yards the machine suddenly dipped and came rushing to the ground. Although the aeroplane was badly damaged, Mr Barnwell escaped with a few slight cuts and bruises and was highly delighted with the results…"

So the Stirling Journal reported what is now regarded as the first powered flight in Scotland, at Causewayhead, Stirling, on 28 July, 1909. A hundred years on - and just three days after the centenary of Louis Blériot's historic Channel flight - a ceremony in the village of Balfron, Stirlingshire, this evening will celebrate the memory of the Barnwell brothers, Frank and Harold, who spent their teenage years in the village and not only made that short but historic flight at Stirling, but went on to make their mark in a fledgling aviation industry, which ultimately killed both of them.

Frank Barnwell, especially, left an enduring legacy, becoming chief engineer for the Bristol Aeroplane company, and some of his design principles still hold good in today's cutting-edge aircraft.

However, today's ceremony, when minister for culture Mike Russell will unveil a plaque and present the Royal Aeronautical Society's 2009 Heritage Award, will mark the centenary of that first, short hop, when Harold piloted the biplane they had built at their family business at Causewayhead, the Grampian Motor and Engineering Company. Reportedly powered by a Humber car engine, the flimsy craft did not fly much higher than a dozen feet, or travel more than 80 yards before stalling and crashing.

Undaunted, the brothers built a monoplane with a water-cooled, twin-cylinder engine of their own design, which in 1911 Harold flew for 600 yards at a height of 50ft, ending up upside down in a field, but winning the JRK Law prize for the first half-mile flight in an all-Scottish aeroplane. The flying machine later achieved a five-mile flight at altitudes of up to 200ft.

By the time of their first powered flight successes, the Barnwells had left Balfron, but they, along with a third brother, Archibald, who later became a lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery, spent formative years at Elcho house, a Victorian mansion in the village, where their father, Richard Barnwell, managing director of Fairfields shipyard, moved the family in 1894 after his wife died. Frank and Harold flew their first gliders and experimental powered aircraft on the lawns of the house and nearby fields, using its stable - today converted into a house - as their base.

After serving an apprenticeship at his father's shipyard and gaining a degree in naval architecture at Glasgow University, Frank visited America, where he met the Wright brothers, who had achieved the world's first controlled powered flight at Kittyhawk in December 1903, when their Flyer had skimmed over the North Carolina sand flats.

In Scotland, it wasn't just the Barnwells who were infected by the aviation fever sweeping the western world, and there were numerous heavier-than-air machines, powered or otherwise, attempting tentative flights here in subsequent years.

There were Percy Pilcher's gliding experiments near Cardross, Dunbartonshire, in the 1880s, for example, while anecdotal claims are made that Preston Watson at Errol and John Dunne at Blair Atholl, both flew powered aircraft prior to 1909.

It is the Barnwells' flight, however, that is accepted as the first Scottish powered flight. "Certainly that seems to be acknowledged," says Ian Brown, assistant curator for aviation at National Museums Scotland, who adds that, while other Scottish pioneers were clearly active at the time, earlier claims for them tend to lack verifiable evidence. "The Barnwells' first flight was just 80 yards, which is really just a hop but still longer than the first flight of the Wright brothers, and it's certainly long enough to count as a powered flight, even if they did crash at the end of it."

"Imagine the commitment and faith required to achieve such a first," says Mike Russell, of the two brothers. "Their tenacity and commitment impresses me, and on the centenary of their great achievement, it is fitting that Balfron, the Barnwell brothers' childhood home and base for many of their experiments with early aircraft designs, has been recognised by the Royal Aeronautical Society."

Following their initial flying ventures in Scotland, Frank and Harold headed south, where Harold - said to be the better pilot of the two - joined Vickers as a test and training pilot, as well as a designer, helping to design the Vickers Fb5 "Gunbus", which was a mainstay of the Royal Flying Corps during the early stages of the First World War, and a prototype biplane fighter known as the Barnwell Bullet. Frank was recruited by the fledgling Bristol Aeroplane Company, where he became chief engineer, creating a clutch of notable aircraft including the First World War F2B Bristol Fighter or "Brisfit" and, between the wars, the Blenheim light bomber.

Frank Barnwell's obituary in The Aeroplane magazine in 1938 described him as "beyond question one of the best airplane designers in this country or in the world", a claim borne out by Iain Gilmour Gray, chief executive of the Technology Strategy Board and former managing director of Airbus UK, which designs and produces the wings for the Airbus A380 "superjumbo", the world's largest commercial passenger plane, at Filton, near Bristol.

"The Barnwell brothers were not just Scottish aviation pioneers, but influenced the evolution of the aerospace industry in the UK and across the world," says Gray, who will attend today's event. And, he adds, design principles established by Frank Barnwell, particularly involving stressed wing structures, still apply in aircraft such as the giant A380.

"OK, things are significantly more advanced now in terms of computer capability and things, but many of the principles he introduced back in the 1930s helped move the aerospace industry on to the kind of aeroplanes we know today, not so much in terms of engines or power plants, but in structural design, particularly stressed-skin type construction."

And "the spirit of Barnwell" also lives on, says Gray, in that the Bristol Aeroplane Company for whom he was chief designer was the forerunner of what is now Airbus UK, and in the Barnwell lecture held annually by the Bristol branch of the Royal Aeronautical Society, which has counted Gray among its speakers.

Frank Barnwell will be one of the themes, he adds, when the centenary of the Bristol Aeroplane Company is celebrated next year. Like so many other pioneers of early aviation, both Harold and Frank Barnwell died in air crashes, Harold in August 1917 when the Vampire FB26 biplane he was testing spun into the ground at Dartford. Frank, who, according to Pat Thomson of the Balfron Heritage Group, was known as a better designer than he was a pilot, died in 1938 when a light aircraft of his own design, the Barnwell BSW, crashed while taking off from Bristol Airport.

The tragedy wouldn't end there. All three of Frank Barnwell's sons were killed while serving with the RAF during the Second World War - two them while flying the Blenheim bomber their father had designed.

Ten years ago, the only remaining airworthy Blenheim, 60 years old, flew along the Forth valley in tribute to the man who had designed it, his similarly visionary brother and their pioneering flights in the area. Today, Ian Gray is anxious that the Barnwell name should not be regarded just as a historical footnote in the annals of aviation.

"In recognising the centenary of powered flight in Scotland," he says, "it's important not just to see the Barnwell flight as an isolated event, but to realise that one of the great names in aerospace, whose work led to today's thinking, originated from it."

  Noted events in his life were:

• Census, 30 Mar 1851, 36 Burgate Street, St Andrew, Canterbury, Kent. Listed as: Age 1.

• Census, 8 Apr 1861, 36 Burgate Street, St Andrew, Canterbury, Kent. Listed as: Age 11. Grocer's son.

Richard married Anne Sowter, daughter of Unknown and Unknown, on 11 May 1878 in The Parish Church, Gravesend, Kent. (Anne Sowter was born about 1849 in Gillingham, Kent.)