THE first man to launch himself off Sutton Bank in a glider seems to have been one Erik Addyman. He'd have been little more than 20 years old when, in 1911 - just a few years after the Wright brothers' landmark flight - he decided to build his own flying machine.

"He made his own glider, took it to the Bank and threw himself off in it!" says Mike Smith, the Yorkshire Gliding Club's marketing director.

So goes the legend, at least. Thankfully, Addyman survived - and went on to become "another of those larger than life characters that seemed to be part of early British aviation," according to an entry on British Aviation's 'projects to production' website.

Despite Addyman's legendary early leap off Sutton Bank it wasn't until the 1930s that gliding really began to take off in the UK.

In 1922 a national newspaper offered a prize of £1,000 for the longest glider flight from a hill in East Sussex. But it was only in1929 that the British Gliding Association was formed, following a lunch meeting at a restaurant in London.

Then things began to move quickly. There had been reports of German glider pilots making long flights. "So some German pilots were brought to the UK to develop 'hill soaring' techniques," says Mike.

Gliding clubs began to spring up all over the country, including several in Yorkshire - at Scarborough, Bradford, Ilkley, Leeds and Halifax, amongst other places.

In 1933, a national meeting of glider pilots took place at Sutton Bank. Ten thousand people came to watch the glider pilots being put through their paces, and Phillip Wills, of the famous tobacco firm, won three out of the four flights he took part in.

The following year, the various Yorkshire gliding clubs amalgamated, and the Yorkshire Gliding Club, based at Sutton Bank, was born. Land was leased at Sutton Bank, and landing rights were negotiated on farmland below for three shillings. "It's a bit more now!" Mike says. The club was recognised by the British Gliding Association on April 20, 1934 - 80 years ago this coming Sunday.

Several key figures were involved in the formation of the club - including Wills, but also Fred Slingsby, founder of Slingsby Aviation. "He had been a Royal Flying Corps pilot in the First World War," says Mike. In 1937, another distinguished aviator joined the club: Amy Johnson.

Gliders in those days were, naturally, less advanced than today. "People were just exploring the potential of gliding," Mike says. It was essentially a question of launching off a ridge into a prevailing wind, and hovering. Gliders didn't have much 'penetration', so couldn't make the long flights possible today.

Early flights were 'bungee' launches, where a rubber band or 'bungee' was used to launch a glider from the top of the bank. But in 1937, the club bought a winch to help with launches. It was an ageing rolls Royce Silver Ghost, bought for £50 and converted into a winch at a cost of a further £50. "They took one of the wheels off!" Mike says. The resulting 'winch' - the spinning wheel - was used to haul gliders up into the air at the end of a long cable.

In 1938, the club acquired a horse. He was christened Major, and he was supposed to retrieve gliders and the released winch wire.

He proved to have a mind of his own, however. A returning Kite 1 glider hit him on its landing run. After that, Mike says, whenever Major heard the wind whistling in the wires of a returning glider he would run away - if not kick out.

During the war years, the club was closed for civilian flights, although the Air Training Corps continued to learn to fly at Sutton Bank. The club was already, by then, a leading training centre. A poster from 1939, presumably just before the outbreak of war, advertises the Yorkshire Gliding Club 'national motorless flying centre'. "Courses in elementary and advanced gliding for ab-initio pupils, aeroplane pilots and experienced sailplane pilots," it says.

Gliding resumed after the war, although for a while the club struggled. "Much of the early infrastructure had disappeared and few of the pre-war membership returned," the club's history notes. A wartime Mosquito pilot named Henryk Doctor helped turn the club's fortunes around, however. Henryk, a Pole who had flown with the RAF during the war, was appointed the club's chief flying instructor in 1956. "He came to live up here on Sutton Bank in a wooden hut, and he really got things going again," Mike says.

Another notable character in the club's history was Moyra Johnson. She was no relation to Amy Johnson, Mike says - but she was one of the club's earliest members, first taking to the air above Sutton Bank in 1935. She became the club's president, and continued flying well into her nineties, before sadly passing away in 2012 at the age of 96.

The club today is thriving, with about 180 members and what Mike describes as one of the best fleets of club gliders anywhere in the country, including two two-seater gliders and four single seaters, plus some towing aircraft.

The 80th anniversary of the club's recognition by the British Gliding Association is this coming Sunday. But the club is saving its main celebrations for this summer. On June 14, there will be an open day at Sutton Bank. Gliders will be flying in from clubs around the country, and there will be aerobatics displays, and a vintage car rally. "But the main thing will be to try to get as many members of the public into the air as possible," Mike says.

So if you've ever fancied having a go at gliding, it could well be your chance.

Stephen Lewis

BLOB To find out more about The Yorkshire Gliding Club, visit www.ygc.co.uk/