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YAM Awarded £250,000 National Lottery Grant

Yorkshire Air Museum Celebrates Quarter of a Million Pound National Lottery Grant

The Yorkshire Air Museum is celebrating after being awarded nearly a quarter of a million pounds from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, to help make its extensive archives more accessible to the public.

The Museum, at Elvington near York, has thousands of objects and documents within its collection, donated since it opened in 1985. These range from World War Two pilots’ logs and other documents, to original uniforms and flying gear.

YAM has now been awarded £249,227 from The Heritage Fund to update the storage and documentation of these items, and improve public access – for example, family historians seeking to understand their relatives’ wartime experiences in the RAF.

The funding will also allow the Museum to run outreach projects and collaborate with the local community.

Yorkshire Air Museum Collections Officer, Sarah Maultby, said:

‘This funding will enable the Museum to upgrade its collections management system and install bespoke storage, designed for the specific needs of the collection.

There will be opportunities for volunteers, students, local groups and schools to take part in events and activities, allowing more people to engage directly with our cultural heritage.

In the long term, the project will build skills within our volunteer team, to carry on improving the documentation, care of and access to the thousands of objects at the museum. These tell important stories about the RAF and history of flight.’

Yorkshire Air Museum Director, Jonathan Brewer, said:

‘We are thrilled to have received this support from The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Thanks to National Lottery players, our Collections Project will allow us to make our incredible archive more organised and accessible. Every item tells a powerful story: from mascots and charms taken on flights by aircrew as good luck tokens, to Wartime Logs kept by Prisoners of War. With this generous funding, we can truly make the most of our collection.’

Notes to editors 

The Yorkshire Air Museum and Allied Air Forces Memorial is one of the UK’s leading independent aviation museums.

It was established in the 1980s and is a registered charity and accredited museum.

It stands on the site of RAF Elvington, a wartime heavy bomber base, from where crews flew missions over occupied Europe and Nazi Germany

About The National Lottery Heritage Fund 

Our vision is for heritage to be valued, cared for and sustained for everyone, now and in the future. That’s why as the largest funder for the UK’s heritage we are dedicated to supporting projects that connect people and communities to heritage, as set out in our strategic plan, Heritage 2033. Heritage can be anything from the past that people value and want to pass on to future generations. We believe in the power of heritage to ignite the imagination, offer joy and inspiration, and to build pride in place and connection to the past.

Over the next 10 years, we aim to invest £3.6billion raised for good causes by National Lottery players to make a decisive difference for people, places and communities.

heritagefund.org.uk

Follow @HeritageFundUK on Twitter/X, Facebook and Instagram and use #NationalLottery #HeritageFund

Further information

For more information, contact Jerry Ibbotson, Marketing and Communications Manager, Yorkshire Air Museum. pr@yorkshireairmuseum.org

If you are a journalist and require more info about this story don’t hesitate to email pr@yorkshireairmuseum.org

Blackburn Mercury Monoplane 1911 (Replica) AH (BAPC) 130 YAM Jan.1995

The Blackburn Mercury Monoplane is regarded as the first truly successful aircraft made by Blackburn at their factory in Leeds. The Mercury I, powered by a 50 hp Isaacson radial engine, was displayed at the Olympia Aero Show in March 1911 and made its debut flying from the beach at Filey with the newly formed Blackburn Flying School. In May 1911, it flew from Filey to Scarborough and back in 19 minutes at an average speed of 50 mph, reaching an altitude of 1200 feet.
This aircraft crashed the next day when the engine seized and the propeller flew off! The Mercury I was followed by two Mercury II aircraft powered by 50 hp Gnome engines, and six Mercury III aircraft, with a number of different engines. Sadly, a Renault powered Mercury crashed at Filey in December 1911, killing an instructor and passenger.
The Museum’s replica was built for Yorkshire Television in 1979 for the Edwardian drama series ‘Flambards’, and was taxied with a car engine. It came to YAM on 10th January 1995 and after a long period in storage it was painstakingly restored to a superb display standard, and was unveiled in June 2000 by Professor Robert Blackburn, grandson of Robert Blackburn, the aviation pioneer.

AVRO 504K ‘H1968’ (Replica) AH (BAPC) 42 YAM Oct. 1994

The Avro 504 first flew in 1913. In the opening phases of the First World War, it served with front-line squadrons in the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service for bombing and reconnaissance, but from 1915 onwards the aircraft entered the training role for which it is most celebrated.

Over 8,000 Avro 504s were built. In 1918, the Royal Air Force had about 3,000, of which 2,276 were trainers.

The Avro 504 was stationed at many Yorkshire airfields, including Tadcaster near the A1/A64 junction, where a period hangar can still be seen.

The Yorkshire Air Museum’s replica was built by apprentices at RAF Halton and appeared at the Royal Tournament in 1968 to commemorate what was then fifty years since the end of the First World War. The aircraft was refurbished in early 2015 to be transported to Thiepval, Northern France, for the Somme Centenary commemoration event, on request of the British Government. In May 2018, it was also displayed at the impressive Hotel Les Invalides in central Paris for a joint RAF / French Air Force event to mark the Centenary of the Royal Air Force and over 100 years of British and French Air Force collaboration.