By Anthony Hontoir
Readers of this magazine may recall an article in the July/August 2019 issue when I wrote asking for information on Captain Denis Par-sons, the pilot in charge of a chartered Avro Tudor 5 airliner which crashed at Sigingstone, near Llandow, in South Wales in 1950 with the loss of 80 lives, including his own. I am making a documentary film about the disaster, and hoped to find out more about Captain Parsons because at the time of his death he was living in Sandhills Meadow, Shepperton.
My film unit has twice been in the locality: the first time was last August, to get a shot of Sandhills Meadow from across the River Thames in Weybridge; the second time was in April this year, in response to information received about where Mr Parsons is buried. The newspaper account at the time of the ac-cident simply stated that his funeral was held in Hanworth. I immediately wondered if this might have meant St George’s church, so I made inquiries to see if parish records would bear this out. Whilst waiting to find out if this was the case, I unexpectedly received news from members of an RAF squadron associa-tion – Captain Parsons had previously served in the Royal Air Force – who have been dili-gently helping me with research, to say that they had discovered his grave is in Feltham Cemetery.
I wasted no time in planning my second visit, whilst church records were still being checked. The first location of the day was to be the cemetery, but I began by calling at St George’s church, a wonderfully picturesque building which apparently once displayed a red light on its spire as a danger signal for small aircraft intending to land at a private airfield nearby. I am told that this system worked well until an aircraft flew too low over the spire and knocked the lamp off. It was an intriguing aviation connection, but in the end I learned that Mr Parsons’s funeral was not held there, it may well have been just a graveside service.
So there would be no filming at the church, but I headed off to Feltham and set up my camera in the cemetery to film the grave and headstone. Then to Shepperton for the next location, an establishing shot of the Thames, the best position for this seeming to be oppo-site the Red Lion; but as it was now lunchtime, my assistant and I stopped off there for a rather leisurely lunch before setting up the camera in the pub’s garden to get a couple of scenic shots of the river.
Denis Parsons did not live very long in Shepperton with his Canadian wife and step-daughter, but I feel it has become an im-portant part of the story, and once again I would like to ask readers to give the matter some thought – does anyone, especially amongst the locality’s older residents, know of any possible connection with the family? They used to live in a bungalow called “Cockaigne”, now demolished, situated near a property called “Gypsy”, and I have been shown one photograph of it, but if the resi-dents of Sandhills Meadow have any further information, please let me know. I can be contacted at Downwood Films, 13 Marlpit Lane, Porthcawl, Glamorgan, CF36 5EG, or by email: anthonyhontoir@hotmail.co.uk
Photo: Anthony Hontoir on location in April 2021 (Courtesy: Louise Jones)