Memorial to the Home of Aviation

The Aero Club established a flying ground at Leysdown in 1909, with its clubhouse at Mussel Manor, near sheds where the Short Brothers assembled licensed versions of the Wright Flyer.

The Short Brothers factory moved to a better site at Standford Hill, south of Eastchurch, in 1910, where its Grade II listed sheds survive.

The upper white Portland stone panels of the memorial are support by lower walls of Kentish ragstone with integral wooden seating, and the area below is paved with flint cobbles.

An inscription on the central plinth reads: "THIS MEMORIAL / COMMEMORATES / THE FIRST HOME OF / BRITISH AVIATION / 1909 / NEAR THIS SPOT AT / LEYSDOWN EASTCHURCH / (MUSSEL MANOR) (STONEPITTS FARM) / FLIGHTS AND EXPERIMENTS WERE / MADE BY MEMBERS OF THE AERO / CLUB (LATER ROYAL) OF GREAT BRITAIN / ALSO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE / FIRST AIRCRAFT FACTORY IN GREAT / BRITAIN BY SHORT BROTHERS 1909 / AND THE FORMATION OF THE FIRST / ROYAL NAVAL AIR SERVICE STATION / 1911".

Other inscriptions identify the aircraft depicted, list names of early aviators (including John Moore-Brabazon, Charles Rolls, Frank McClean (who granted a lease of the Eastchurch site to the Aero Club), A. K. Huntington, J. W. Dunne, Maurice Egerton, T. O. M. Sopwith, Cecil Grace, Alec Ogilvie, Percy Grace, Ernest Pitman, G. P. L. Jezzi, and James Travers) and early aircraft designers and engineers (including Horace Short, Eustace Short, Oswald Short, and the first four pilots of the Royal Naval Air Service: Charles Rumney Samson, Arthur Longmore, and Reginald Gregory RN, and Eugene Gerrard RMLI.