Page 185 - They Also Served

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Richard Shuttleworth 1929.
Richard Ormonde Shuttleworth was
born at the family seat of Old Warden
Park in Bedfordshire in July 1909. His
father, Colonel Frank Shuttleworth
an industrialist, steeplechase rider and
horse breeder, was already 64 and died
four years later. Scraping into Eton,
young Richard was an indifferent
scholar, although he excelled at anything
practical or mechanical. After attending
a ‘crammer’ to prepare him for the
Sandhurst entrance exam, he was commissioned into the 16th/5th Queen’s Royal Lancers. A keen horseman, he won the Subaltern’s Cup in 1931 and rode in the local hunt. Shuttleworth also began collecting and restoring vintage cars and first took part in the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run in 1928, driving an 1898 Panhard et Levassor.
In 1932, Shuttleworth gained his inheritance and resigned his commission, hoping to join the RAF. However, he was rejected as being too old. Instead, he learned to fly privately and turned to motor racing, being one of the early members of the British Racing Drivers’ Club. Such was his recklessness – he demolished the pits in a crash at Douglas in 1933 – that he was known as ‘Mad Jack’. However, he had considerable talent and, in 1935, driving an Alfa Romeo, he won the Brighton Speed Trials, breaking the course record held by Land Speed Record Holder Sir Malcolm Campbell. Later that year, he won the Donington International Grand Prix, beating, amongst others, future Formula 1 world champion Giuseppe Farina. However, the following year, he crashed at the South African Grand Prix and was in a coma for 19 days. His injuries forced his retirement from motor racing.
Turning his hand to the restoration of old aircraft, he built an airfield on the Old Warden estate and bought a wrecked Blériot XI monoplane of the type that Louis Blériot flew the Channel in 1909. The aircraft is now not only the world’s oldest airworthy aeroplane, it is also still powered by its original engine. The Shuttleworth Collection is still thriving and holds regular flying displays with around 40 aircraft, many of which are the sole survivors of their type.
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