Before 1910 Harold ‘Hal’ Piffard (standing left of centre) was an established history painter, with works exhibited at the Royal Academy, as well as a sought-after magazine and book illustrator, working for The Strand Magazine and creating illustrations for Boys’ Own adventure stories.

But in middle age, having become obsessed with making model aircraft, he was overtaken by a quixotic desire to actually fly. He went on to build – and pilot – some of Britain’s first hydro-aeroplanes from a hangar in a field in Shoreham, near his old school, Lancing College.

Piffard wasn’t alone in his lofty ambition. His assistant, a young art student named Barbara Blanck (standing to his left), had helped him design his model aircraft and joined him in his ambition to supersize these experiments into genuine flying machines, with the help of a group of passionate amateurs.

The above contraption, a spidery biplane balanced on twin pontoons dubbed ‘Pusher’, looks as much like an avant-garde sculpture as a feat of engineering, which is unsurprising given its makers’ background. The biplane was powered by a 40hp ENV engine with a seven-foot propeller, front elevator and rear stabiliser. Its wingspan was an impressive 31 feet. Unfortunately, after going up tiddley up up, it came down tiddley down down rather too quickly. Piffard might have been propelled by huge reserves of optimistic imagination, but he was generally betrayed by gravity.

Locals gathered to watch the pair’s improbable partnership: the artist and his assistant, coaxing their works of art into flight. Piffard’s experiments were meat and drink to the press, part triumph, part comedy, and they briefly made Shoreham a focus of national attention. His flying machines may have ended in failure, with Piffard returning to London to pursue his career as an artist, but he certainly left a legacy: the field he had rented for his experiments eventually became Shoreham Airport.