William Tomkin

William Stephen Tomkin (25 November 1860 – 7 April 1940) was born at Park Road in the village of Boughton Monchelsea, which lies on a ragstone ridge between the North Downs and the Weald of Kent, a few miles south of Maidstone.

[1] He was the first child of farmer William Stephen Tomkin (Snr) and Elizabeth his wife, who had married at St. Mary’s Church, Woolwich, in April 1859.

He maintained that the many flints – "eoliths" – which he found in the pre-glacial drift on the North Down were artefacts that challenged current beliefs about the antiquity of man.

His next employment was with Waterlow & Sons, a major worldwide engraver of currency, postage stamps, stocks and bond certificates based in London, Watford and Dunstable in England.

Apart from his commercial work, Tomkin continued to be a prolific watercolour artist – a highly proficient painter of maritime subjects – exhibiting one, Wind Against the Tide at the Royal Academy in 1909.

In 1916, he recorded the shooting down of a German SL11 airship during a bombing raid, which crashed in flames at Cuffley, Hertfordshire on the night of 2/3 September; the first to do so on British soil.

The night scene, captured by Tomkin from his Walthamstow garden, contains a scrap from the wreckage and is now held at the RAF Museum, Hendon, near to Cuffley.