Lilian Bland

Lilian Bland Park

comad September 14th, 2015

Glengormley Park, located in Glengormley between the Carnmoney Road and Ballyclare Road, was renamed Lilian Bland Community Park on 24th August 2011, when a new sculpture to commemorate the historic achievements of Newtownabbey’s celebrated aviator Lilian Bland, was officially unveiled.

The Mayfly sculpture in the park depicting Lilian Bland’s biplane ‘The Mayfly’ which took flight from Carnmoney Hill in 1910, has been designed to be a lasting legacy to her amazing achievement in becoming the first woman in Ireland to design, build and fly her own plane.

The £24,000 stainless steel artwork, which is also a children’s play item, was designed by Skelton Rainey and is a full-size representation of Lilian’s biplane. The sculpture was built by NIJEN Stainless Fabrications, Carrickfergus.

There was a good turnout for the event with both the Mayor and Deputy Mayor, representatives of local historical and aviation societies and two of Lilian’s descendants, Rev. Edward Pratt, grand nephew, and Mrs Imogen Holmes, grand niece.

Imogen said that the young Lilian Bland had been inspired by the Frenchman Bleriot flying the Channel in 1909 and so designed and built the Mayfly. She was so keen to fly that she came over to England to pick up the engine and took it a back on the train with her. Once home in Ireland, there was no petrol tank so she used an empty whisky bottle and her aunt’s ear trumpet. When she flew it, it actually flew for 30 yards. It was barely longer than a cricket pitch but only a little short of the distance Orville Wright flew on his first flight in December 1903.

Requiring a larger field for powered flight she arranged for it to be towed to Lord O’Neill’s 800 acre park at Randalstown. Her first flights from this location were made in August 1910 and reach the dizzy height of upwards of 30 feet. She continued to fly and improve her design until the spring of 1911, when her father who didn’t approve of her flying activities, persuaded her to give it up if he bought her a car. She did so, and became Ford’s first agent in the North of Ireland.

Her family disapproved of what they saw as ‘unladylike’ jobs. For the grandaughter of the Rev Robert Wintringham Bland, perpetual curate at St George’s Parish Church in Belfast, our Lilian was far from conventional despite her genteel background. She smoked, wore trousers, was a ju-jitsu expert and a good shot with a rifle and was even known to swear a little.

In 1911 she married her cousin Charles Loftus Bland and lived for years in Vancouver Island, Canada. They had a teenage daughter who died in an accident, Lilian came back to England and settled in the village of Sennen near Land’s End. She died there at the grand age of 92.