Brooklands Museum, Weybridge
Hawker flew and built aircraft at Brooklands. The museum covers the Hawker line and has a Hurricane at the centre of its Battle of Britain display.
The types
Hawker aircraft you can see
| Type | First flew | Built | UK museums |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hawker Cygnetreplica | 1924 | 2 | 1 |
| Hawker Hart familyHart, Hind, Demon, Afghan | 1928 | ~3,000 | 2 |
| Hawker Tomtit | 1928 | 36 | 1 |
| Hawker Fury & Nimrod | 1931 | ~450 | 2 |
| Hawker Hind | 1934 | 528 | 1 |
| Hawker HurricaneI–XII & Sea Hurricane | 1935 | 14,583 | 18 |
| Hawker Typhoon & TempestIB / II / V | 1940 | ~4,800 | 6 |
| Hawker Sea Fury | 1944 | 864 | 3 |
| Hawker Sea Hawk | 1947 | 542 | 12 |
| Handley Page HP.115 & the research one-offsHP.115, Hunting H.126, Short SB.4 Sherpa, Hawker P.1052 & P.1121, Saunders-Roe SR.53 | 1948 | 1 or 2 apiece | 4 |
| Hawker HunterF.6, FGA.9, T.7 | 1951 | 1,972 | 32 |
| Harrier familyP.1127, Kestrel, GR.3, Sea Harrier, GR.9 | 1960 | ~825 | 21 |
The firm
Hawker in brief
The firm was based at Kingston upon Thames, with flight testing at Brooklands and later sites at Langley and Dunsfold. Sydney Camm led the design team for decades. His Hart and Hind biplanes were followed by the Hurricane, which first flew at Brooklands in 1935. The Typhoon, Tempest, Sea Fury and Hunter came next, then the P.1127 vertical take-off jet.
The company was renamed Hawker Aircraft in 1933 and bought Gloster in 1934. In 1935 it formed Hawker Siddeley with the Armstrong Siddeley, Armstrong Whitworth and Avro businesses. The Hawker name was dropped in 1963. The P.1127, forerunner of the Harrier, was the last type to carry it.
Where to go
Museums holding Hawker aircraft
| Museum | Hawker types | Adult entry | Airframes | Headline exhibit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IWM DuxfordCambridge, Cambridgeshire | 7 | £29 | 146 | Concorde 101 (G-AXDN), the pre-production development aircraft and the fastest Concorde of them all at Mach 2.23 — plus an SR-71A… |
| Royal Air Force Museum MidlandsShifnal, Shropshire | 6 | Free | 78 | TSR-2 XR220, one of two survivors of the most gifted aircraft Britain ever cancelled, sharing floor space with the stainless-steel… |
| Brooklands MuseumWeybridge, Surrey | 5 | £24–£27 | 32 | Concorde G-BBDG, the British production-test aircraft, bookended by a Wellington bomber dredged out of Loch Ness in 1985 and the only… |
| Fleet Air Arm MuseumYeovil, Somerset | 5 | £21 | 97 | Concorde 002 (G-BSST), the first British-assembled Concorde, which made her maiden flight from Filton in 1969 and now headlines a hall of… |
| Royal Air Force Museum LondonLondon, Greater London | 5 | Free | 88 | Avro Lancaster R5868 'S-Sugar' — 137 operations, the RAF's highest-scoring surviving heavy — under the same roof as a Vulcan, a… |
| The Shuttleworth CollectionBiggleswade, Bedfordshire | 4 | £19.50 | 55 | The 1934 DH.88 Comet 'Grosvenor House', winner of the MacRobertson England–Australia air race, restored to fly; and the Edwardians —… |
| Ulster Aviation Society (Maze Long Kesh)Lisburn, County Antrim | 4 | By appointment | 63 | The Shorts family — SC.1 vertical take-off research aircraft included — plus a Buccaneer, Phantom, Wildcat, and a newly arrived AV-8… |
| Airworld Aviation MuseumCaernarfon, Gwynedd | 3 | £7 | 10 | Airworld at Caernarfon Airport (RAF Llandwrog, birthplace of the RAF Mountain Rescue Service): Hunter, Vampire and the world's only… |
| Boscombe Down Aviation CollectionSalisbury, Wiltshire | 3 | £13.50 | 49 | The Lancaster cockpit reproduction tour, and a test-and-evaluation pedigree collection you can physically inhabit rather than admire… |
| Gatwick Aviation MuseumGatwick, Surrey | 3 | £12.50 | 16 | Avro Shackleton WR982 (the £5 guided tour is unanimously endorsed) and a live-engined English Electric Lightning. There's also… |
| Midland Air MuseumCoventry, Warwickshire | 3 | £11 | 66 | Vulcan XL360 with cockpit access and volunteer-led tours (ask for the instrumentation talk), plus the Whittle jet heritage collection a… |
| Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation MuseumBungay, Suffolk | 3 | £10 | 65 | Depends who you ask — the joy is the oddities. Come for the Bloodhound missiles and decoy rarities; stay for volunteer flight-simulator… |
| South Wales Aviation MuseumBarry, Vale of Glamorgan | 3 | £10 | 73 | The resident Harrier and a growing VC10/Tornado-era collection, most with steps and open canopies. Kids exit wearing thousand-yard grins. |
| South Yorkshire Aircraft MuseumDoncaster, South Yorkshire | 3 | £7.50 | 109 | Doncaster's South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum sprawls across the old RAF Doncaster site: dozens of airframes and helicopters, strong… |
| Tangmere Military Aviation MuseumChichester, West Sussex | 3 | £15 | 23 | Hawker Hunter WB188 in one-off scarlet, in which Neville Duke took the world air speed record to 727.63 mph off this coast in 1953;… |
| Wings Aviation MuseumHaywards Heath, West Sussex | 3 | £13 | 25 | The Wings Museum near Balcombe displays Eastern Front and D-Day aircraft archaeology in crash-site dioramas — raw, unpolished and… |
| Yorkshire Air MuseumYork, North Yorkshire | 3 | £17 | 54 | Halifax 'Friday the 13th' — the world's only complete Halifax reconstruction, honouring the type that flew from this very field —… |
| Bentwaters Cold War MuseumWoodbridge, Suffolk | 2 | £7.50 | 9 | Bentwaters Cold War Museum occupies the actual USAF hardened command post — war room, battle cabin and decontamination showers intact —… |
| City of Norwich Aviation MuseumNorwich, Norfolk | 2 | £9 | 33 | City of Norwich Aviation Museum at Horsham St Faith: Norfolk's largest, ~30 airframes including a Vulcan and Nimrod with bookable… |
| East Midlands AeroparkDerby, Leicestershire | 2 | £5 | 35 | East Midlands Aeropark: a Vulcan, Nimrod R1 and Buccaneer parked on grassy mounds overlooking EMA's runway — half museum, half premier… |
| Farnborough Air Sciences Trust MuseumFarnborough, Hampshire | 2 | Free | 16 | FAST at Farnborough guards the birthplace of British aviation science — Cody, the RAE, wind tunnels — with sit-in Harrier, Puma and Lynx… |
| Jet Age MuseumGloucester, Gloucestershire | 2 | Donation | 15 | Gloucestershire's jet-age shrine (free!) beside Staverton airport: Gloster heritage from the E.28/39 replica to Javelins, with… |
| National Museum Of FlightNorth Berwick, East Lothian | 2 | £15 | 47 | Concorde G-BOAA, which flew British Airways' first commercial supersonic service in 1976 and arrived here by barge and giant road-crawl… |
| Newark Air MuseumNewark, Nottinghamshire | 2 | £12.50 | 95 | Vulcan XM594, with cockpit tours occasionally given by former Vulcan aircrew, which reviewers describe with the reverence normally… |
| North East Land, Sea and Air MuseumsSunderland, Tyne and Wear | 2 | £7.50 | 46 | NELSAM in Sunderland mixes Vulcan XL319 (flew in when the airport still existed), a Pucará from the Falklands, trams, buses and a… |
| Battle of Britain BunkerUxbridge, Greater London | 1 | £12.50 | 2 | The actual 11 Group operations bunker at Uxbridge, 77 steps down, restored to its Battle of Britain configuration — Churchill watched the… |
| Battle Of Britain Memorial Flight Visitors CentreLincoln, Lincolnshire | 1 | £12.50 | 11 | Lancaster PA474 — one of only two airworthy Lancasters on Earth — when she's home (she periodically visits Duxford for deep maintenance,… |
| Biggin Hill Heritage HangarWesterham, Greater London | 1 | £49 | 17 | A rotating dozen-ish airworthy and in-rebuild Spitfires plus a Hurricane and Buchón; the 'Sit in a Spitfire' add-on is the affordable… |
| Bournemouth Aviation MuseumChristchurch, Dorset | 1 | £10 | 29 | The sit-anywhere policy itself — one entry fee, no per-cockpit charges, a full BAC 1-11 flight-deck sim in a shed, and thousands… |
| Cornwall at War Museum, DavidstowCamelford, Cornwall | 1 | £7 | 8 | Cornwall’s big WW2 / military museum on the old RAF Davidstow Moor Coastal Command field — aircraft, military vehicles, humour intact,… |
| Hooton Park HangarsEllesmere Port, Cheshire | 1 | £9 | 45 | Hooton Park's 1917 Belfast-truss hangars — among the finest WWI aviation buildings surviving — hold aircraft, buses and a printing museum… |
| Hucknall Flight Test MuseumNottingham, Nottinghamshire | 1 | By appointment | 3 | Hucknall Flight Test Museum, on the aerodrome where Rolls-Royce flew testbeds from 1934 (and hoisted the Flying Bedstead into history),… |
| Kent Battle of Britain Museum TrustFolkestone, Kent | 1 | £12 | 8 | Hawkinge is hallowed turf: the closest fighter station to France in 1940, now the Kent Battle of Britain Museum with the world's largest… |
| Montrose Air Station MuseumMontrose, Angus | 1 | £10 | 14 | The 1913 fabric itself, plus the resident ghost stories (Montrose is Britain's most famously haunted airfield, a claim the volunteers… |
| MorayviaForres, Moray | 1 | £8 | 35 | Nimrod XV244 (complete, and the crew who operated her sometimes give the tours) alongside a Sea King in RAF SAR yellow — the machine that… |
| RAF Coltishall Heritage CentreNorwich, Norfolk | 1 | Free | 5 | RAF Coltishall's guardroom museum, curated by veterans of the base — the Jaguar force's spiritual home, free to enter on open days, with… |
| Robertsbridge Aviation SocietyRobertsbridge, East Sussex | 1 | Free | 6 | Robertsbridge Aviation Society — a village-hall-sized museum of recovered WWII relics and six jet cockpit sections, curated with… |
| Romney Marsh Wartime CollectionRomney Marsh, Kent | 1 | £8 | 5 | The Romney Marsh Wartime Collection at Brenzett: a former Women's Land Army hostel stuffed with locally dug aircraft archaeology from the… |
| Solent SkySouthampton, Hampshire | 1 | £14 | 23 | Supermarine S.6A N248, the 1929 Schneider Trophy racer from the bloodline that begat the Spitfire — parked beneath its descendant for… |
| Solway Aviation MuseumCrosby on Eden, Cumbria | 1 | £8 | 21 | Vulcan XJ823 with pre-bookable crew-compartment visits; a Phantom, Lightning and Canberra (whose three-crew cockpit reviewers describe as… |
| Spitfire & Hurricane Memorial Museum, ManstonRamsgate, Kent | 1 | Free | 3 | Free-entry memorial museum holding Spitfire TB752 and Hurricane LF751 plus a dense Manston story — the emergency runway where crippled… |
| Spitfire Visitor Centre, Hangar 42, BlackpoolBlackpool, Lancashire | 1 | £12 | 6 | The Ops Room recreation and the £5 sit-in-a-Spitfire photography session — the cheapest Spitfire seat time in the country. |
| Stoneykirk Aviation MuseumStranraer, Dumfries and Galloway | 1 | £6 | 9 | Stoneykirk: one enthusiast's cockpit collection on a Galloway croft, Vulcan included, with tea, cakes and a perfect 5.0 rating — the… |
| Suffolk Aviation Heritage MuseumIpswich, Suffolk | 1 | £5 | 5 | Kesgrave's Suffolk Aviation Heritage Museum: a Vampire, Jet Provost and Hunter plus a strong Falklands room, run with infectious… |
| Sywell Aviation MuseumNorthampton, Northamptonshire | 1 | Free | 5 | Sywell Aviation Museum: a POW-hut-sized, free museum on Britain's loveliest Art Deco aerodrome, where resident Spitfires and a Mustang… |
| Trenchard MuseumAylesbury, Buckinghamshire | 1 | By appointment | 6 | The Trenchard Museum at RAF Halton tells the story of the RAF's apprentice scheme — 'Trenchard's Brats' — on the working base where… |
Questions
Frequently asked
Who designed the Hurricane?
Sydney Camm and the Hawker design team at Kingston upon Thames. The prototype first flew at Brooklands in 1935.
Is Hawker the same as Hawker Siddeley?
Hawker was the parent. In 1935 it bought Armstrong Siddeley, Armstrong Whitworth and Avro to form Hawker Siddeley, but each firm kept its own name until 1963.
What was the last Hawker aircraft?
The P.1127 vertical take-off jet, which led to the Harrier. After 1963 new types were branded Hawker Siddeley.