Mystery plane in post-war Dog Kennel Hill (Durlestone Manor South Lodge?)

[preston_johns]

A random question for local historians out there. I was having a browse around the wonderful Aerial Photo Explorer: https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/archive/collections/aerial-photos/ and found this 1946 RAF shot of Dog Kennel Hill/Dulwich Hamlet etc: https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/archive/collections/aerial-photos/record/RAF_106G_UK_1356_V_5165

If you zoom in to Champion Hill at the top of the image, there is what appears to be a large aeroplane in the front garden of a house. The house no longer exists, but the location roughly corresponds with the Langford Green estate.

Anyone have any insight as to what this might have been? A downed German bomber, perhaps?

[kford]

Looks like a Dornier Do 217 light bomber!

[ed_pete]

If you're on Twitter you could try asking "Dulwich Local History" @DulwichHistory - they might know

[Spartacus]

Is it the bomber that was reported in the Sunday Sport in 1988 ?

[ianr]

Here's a pointer to its location in the photo.

[johnie]

I really can't see it. Can someone zoom and screenshot?

[snathani]

Here....

[creditwheredue]

Mystery Plane? Wonderful homage to The Cramps.

[Moovart]

Looks like quite a grand house with a long oval drive. Maybe you could find who the house belonged to. Kelly's directory? Census?

The plane does look like it's been placed like a post war trophy/exhibit in the middle of the drive.

[CPR Dave]

How did you spot that!??

[Moovart]

Could be this house?

Map attached

https://m.londonpicturearchive.org.uk/view-item?i=56290&WINID=1648543209902

[Moovart]

The South Lodge of Durlestone Manor Hotel which I think is the photo above. Fascinating.

[Jenijenjen]

I think that's right, Durlstone Manor Hotel itself is on the other leg of Champion Hill just around the corner. The building is still there and very secluded opposite the building, formerly The Plantanes, now part of Kings College Hospital.

When does your map date from? I attach a screenshot from a map surveyed in 1949 which shows the South Lodge at some stage was renamed The Cottage.

[ianr]

A couple of small ads featuring the residence from the BNA:

TO BE SOLD.—GREY COB MARE , quiet in double or single harness, and quiet to ride. Price moderate—Apply to COACHMAN, South Lodge, Champion Hill, S.E.

Sporting Life - 22 Oct 1883

Recently Proved Wills

Mr Charles Goddard Clarke, M.P. for Peckham, South Lodge, Champion Hill, ?28,227

Various - July 1908

[Jenijenjen]

@dulwichhistory and @dulwichsociety alerted

[Moovart]

The map was from 1946.

I found this article in The Telegraph if anyone has access

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/4809747/From-the-manor-torn.html

Says the Kleinwort Benson banking family built it as a rural retreat and then the Colman's mustard family so there would probably be an archive somewhere to explain the plane.

Maybe preston_johns OP should retitle the thread Durlestone Manor South Lodge aeroplane and see if anyone who knows the story recognises the place

[Moovart]

Just found this in my research too.

Who'd have thought the green cross code man aka Darth Vader, was in north cross road in 1975

https://www.layersoflondon.org/map/records/green-cross-code-man-filmed-in-north-cross-rd-1975/gallery/1

[DulwichSociety]

Wow @preston_johns, you have really good eyesight! What a great find. The house is South Lodge and we know a little about it but not who was living there in 1946 and why they had a plane parked out front! @Moovart, it wasn't built for the Kleinworts, though they did live in several houses in the area, see here https://www.dulwichsociety.com/the-journal/autumn-2014/the-germans-of-champion-hill-by-sharon-o-connor but it does have a German connection (so many Germans lived in this area) as its first known resident was George Egmont Bieber who lived here while he built The Platanes, a huge house which he later sold to Herman Kleinwort. Kleinwort later gave it to King's College Hospital because he couldn't sell it - it's still there on Champion Hill. South Lodge was later leased by Charles Goddard Clarke, MP for Peckham (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Goddard_Clarke). @Jenijenjen, we think The Cottage was a separate house. We don't know who lived in South Lodge in 1946 (or 45 Champion Hill as I think it was by then) but will add it to the to-do list for a trip to Southwark Archives, but in 1939 Ethel & Jeffrey Drake, he was a BBC TV engineer, lived here, as did two nurses, Barbara Smith and Jean Menzies. Of course, a neighbour could have been borrowing that large drive but where was the runway?! Perhaps on the fields across the road that had been used for silent movies before WW1 and was also home to Dulwich Hamlet FC?

[colville09]

I suspect it was a ?prop? used for fundraising efforts like The Spitfire Fund. During the war, local fundraising days often featured a ?plane? as a big attraction to help fill the collecting buckets. Maybe it was just parked there when the need passed.

[snathani]

Interesting about the Spitfire Funds! Looks quite Spitfirey or Hurricaney, but could be a German plane, if this pic of a fundraiser in Dudley is anything to go by... https://www.expressandstar.com/news/nostalgia/2020/07/10/how-the-west-midlands-reached-for-the-skies-with-spitfire-funds/

[Maple]

Opinion in this house is that it?s likely a fundraiser cobbled together from various planes, mostly a Stuka but it doesn?t look quite right to be a complete one.

[preston_johns]

Thanks for all these updates and theories. It does look like a light bomber, with a wingspan that excedes the width of the double-fronted South Lodge. I like the fundraising idea, but it does look more Axis than Allied. Someone said Dornier Do 17, which would seem to fit quite well (wingspan c18m). So fundraising for what?

[Rockets]

What a fantastic spot and what an amazingly intriguing story....I do hope you get to the bottom of it.

[Insuflo]

Pure guesswork on my part but could the fact that these are RAF photos of the late 40s be at the root of this mystery? At that time(before satellite photography)aerial photos taken from planes would be examined by eye for hostile military installations, troop movements, airfields etc. Those examining these photos would need to be trained. Could it be that there was no plane but that it is a plant to be found (or missed) by the trainee spotters? As such, it was perhaps superimposed on the photo, painted onto the negative or however such things were then achieved, for training purposes; the enemy plane hiding in plain sight. It would need to be placed on a big enough piece of land but not where it would easily stand out, like the middle of Kennington Oval or the boating lake in the park, a villa's carriage drive being ideal. Just a thought.

Another possibility occurring to me was that it might a dummy (inflatable? or partly so?). A lot of dummy aircraft were positioned around England during WW2 to confuse German spotter planes as to the disposition of Allied airbases and reserve fleets. Columns of inflatable and mock up tanks were also common, particularly in north Africa. There must have been many surplus dummies knocking about in 1946. Quite why one might end up in this garden is another thing.

[barrybrush]

I like your theory that it is an image put on the photo for training purposes. It has more logic than the other explanation of being an actual aircraft or a mock up for fundraising purposes. If that was the case it would have been placed in a much more prominent location.