WE celebrated the Centenary of Sam Cody landing on Eccleston Hill in 2009, and I was chuffed we made it on the BBC’s ‘North West Tonight’ that night.

The first of our two photos (left) was of Cody who had landed on Eccleston Hill. It’s estimated that a crowd of more 10,000 people flocked there to see the aircraft they had only read about in the papers.

The second photo (right) is from the Theatre Royal’s own archives. They have a damaged poster that survived the 1899 fire the week his play was at the Theatre Royal.

Cody was an American who had been a cowboy and adventurer. He came over to the UK after touring in the USA with Annie Oakley as he was also a crack shot.

He had come over from the USA about 10 years earlier and first mention of him on these shores was when he appeared at the Circus in our North Road, a temporary structure while they were building the Theatre Royal on Corporation Street.

IAN GRIFFITHS sent me this article: “August 7 this year sees the centenary of the death of Samuel Franklin Cody, the ‘father of British aviation’. ‘Colonel’ Cody was a colourful showman who took his ‘Wild West Roadshow’ around the country and had performed at the Theatre Royal when it burned down on 13 Oct 1899.

“Cody was employed by the British Army as a chief kiting Instructor and he went on to record the first flight in an aeroplane in the UK on 16 October 1908.

“On 29 December 1909 Cody became the first person to land a powered aeroplane in St Helens as he attempted to fly his bi-plane from Aintree to Manchester to claim the Sir William Hartley prize of £1000 for the first aviator to fly the 35 miles between Liverpool and Manchester.

“After take off from Aintree at 12.17pm, Cody passed over Knowsley Park but soon ran into smoke and fog coming from industry in St Helens. Flying between 80 to 200 feet, Cody was confronted by the high ground at Eccleston Hill. He tried to veer around the hill but faced with the tramway and telephone wires above the Prescot to St Helens road he opted to land at Valencia Farm, close to the old church at Portico. Following his landing a large crowd soon gathered and Alderman Dixon-Nuttall invited him to lunch at his residence in Eccleston Park.

“In 1911 he finished fourth in the Daily Mail "Circuit of Great Britain" air race, for which he was awarded the Silver Medal of the Royal Aero Club in 1912.

“Cody died on 7 August 1913 when the aeroplane he was flying broke up in the air over Ball Hill, near Farnborough in Hampshire killing himself and his passenger.

“Mr Martin Keen of Keenair will, weather permitting, carry out a flypast at Portico on Wednesday, August 7.”