| Farnborough |
| Mention Air Shows in Hampshire and everybody thinks
of Farnborough! As until recently it was the venue for one of the worlds
most famous air shows, but until the 1850s it was a sparsely populated
area of heathland. It was the military advisors of Queen Victoria that
realised its potential and purchased over 25,000 acres to build what was
to become the home for the British Army at nearby Aldershot and a little
while later in 1906, the Military Ballooning Base up sticks and moved
from Woolwich down to Farnborough, this was to be the start of the towns
connections with the air. This increase in population brought about the
South Farnborough shopping centre at North Camp and then later the Royal
Aircraft Establishment was born and has become a world renown centre for
aviation research and development. The town is listed in the Domesday Book as Fernegerga meaning Hill of ferns, but until the middle of the 19th century it was a village. The growth of the area led to the expansion of Cove and North Farnborough whilst the nucleus of the old village is Farnborough Street. The town centre has seen a lot of new growth especially since the early 1960s and the Queensmead and Kingsmead shopping centres are thriving concerns along with the Southwood Village Centre. The registers of the St Peter's parish church date back to 1548 and the oldest parts of the church to 1200, and this too has seen a lot of enlargement and restorations and the five Earls of Anglesey are buried in the crypt, their seat was Farnborough Place and is now St Peter's School. Farnborough Hill is a large manion built in 1869 and is a renowned building in the town, it was built in the form of a large chalet and bought by the Empress Eugenie in 1880 and she lived in Farnborough until she did at the age of 95 in 1920. It was here who built the nearby St. Michael's Abbey an Imperial Mausoleum, as a memorial to her husband the Emperor Napoleon III and their son the Prince Imperial whose remains are buried in the crypt. Farnborough is officially linked with Aldershot under the umbrella of Rushmoor Council and the airfield is the major employer in the area. A first time pioneer pilot named Samuel Cody from Texas made the first flight in Britain at Laffan's Plain which became a part of the airfield. This was the start of a great leap in the history of flying as the town became well into the front of flying and both military and civilian aircraft have made their first flight from here. Also stationed here are the aircraft accident investigators whose job it is to travel to any part of the world where a British aircraft has crashed and a special hangar was constructed so as to lay out the pieces of wreckage for the experts to examine. One of the most famous of these cases was the jumbo jet blown up by terrorists over Lockerbie killing more than 150 people.
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