Cedric was lord of the skies

He flew in a veteran First World War fighter biplane. Half a century later, he took off in Concorde.

His first flight took place in 1926. By 1935 he was working at Southend Airport and was present for its official opening day. He even built and serviced fighting aircraft during the Second World War.

For the first three decades of his life he was in love with aircraft. Yet eventually Cedric became disenchanted, and walked away from the world of aviation.

Now, a sprightly and still active 90, Cedric is finally land-bound, by choice. It has taken him a long time to become grounded, however.

Cedric's passion for flight began at the age of nine. "My dad gave me a plane ride for my ninth birthday present. We took off from a little flying club somewhere in London, and after that I was hooked. Aircraft became my life," he says.

As a boy he collected everything he could find about aeroplanes and pasted it into scrapbooks. He was still a pupil at Westcliff High School when he started to work at the original Rochford airfield, doing odd jobs, provided they allowed him to be close to his beloved aircraft.

He would cycle to the airport from his home in Westcliff, arriving punctually at 8am, never quite knowing what adventures the day would hold.

On a good day he might be home by 8pm with half a crown (12.5p) in his pocket. But there were other rewards. He brushed shoulders with legendary names, people like the female pioneer Amy Johnson, the parachute inventor Lesley Irving, and Spitfire test-pilot Alex Henshaw. He was also offered plenty of chances to fly in two and three-seater aircraft as the pilot's back-up man.

On summer days they would follow the paddle-steamers in the Thames Estuary, or skim low over the waves, waving at the day-trippers on Southend Pier.

The original airfield lay slightly to the north of the present one, on a site now covered by housing. In the relaxed, improvising spirit of early aviation, it shared the location with an older form of speed and motion, a pony racing track.

Southend Flying Club ran a small operation around the track, training pilots and hiring out planes for special events. There was also a regular passenger service to and from Rochester airfield, run by Southend Flying Services.

The airfield was staffed by a cast of larger-than-life characters inspired, like Cedric, by a love of flight and a vision for its potential. One of them was Victor Savory, the airfield's ground engineer. He had been one of only nine survivors from the terrible R101 airship disaster in 1930. "His face was burnt to a frazzle," Cedric recalls.

Savory was responsible for an act of considerable heroism at Southend airfield, directly witnessed by Cedric.

"We had a plane that ran away on the ground," he recalls. The plane trundled straight for the grandstand, which was full of spectators.

"We managed to get most of them out, but there was still one man and a little boy left at the back."

The plane hit the grandstand and mounted the tiers of seats. "It could have exploded and caught fire at any moment. But Victor calmly climbed into the cockpit and switched off the engine. He knew the risk, he knew what it was like to be burned, but he still did it. That, to my mind was real heroism."

From the vantage point of our own tightly-regulated, health and safety-conscious era, the free and easy attitudes of the Thirties sound astonishing. On one occasion, Cedric found himself riding "like an apprentice jockey" astride a pile of two-gallon petrol cans in the passenger seat of a plywood biplane.

The plane had been hired by the Bata Shoe Company in East Tilbury to provide entertainment on King George's Jubilee Day.

The Spartan flew low over Tilbury, looking for a landing point. The best they could find was a field of corn. The plane swept in to land, the propeller and wings shearing through the standing crop. "It was like being machine-gunned by ears of corn," says Cedric.

The pilot explained as best he could to Bata's Czech managers he needed a proper take-off and landing strip. Then he and Cedric sat in the cockpit and waited.

"After a while," Cedric recalls, "there was the sound of puffing and clanking and a steam-roller appeared at the edge of the field."

It proceeded to flatten the corn to make a landing strip.

"We had noticed it when we flew over," says Cedric. "Now they commandeered it."

Inevitably, Cedric went on to work in the aircraft industry.

The school lever was snapped up by Short Brothers, in Chatham, when they discovered his enthusiasm and knowledge of planes.

He rapidly qualified as an aircraft engineer and inspector. Yet in one unpredictable way, his love of aviation was to prove thwarting.

"I badly wanted to join up in the war," he says.

"I passed all the tests. But I was told Sorry, but we can't take you. You're in a reserved occupation.' "

Eventually, a horrifying experience drove Cedric away from the industry altogether.

While refurbishing a damaged plane he came across a blood-soaked cockpit, still containing a severed arm. "It brought home the war to me," he says. "We were going to do to them what they had done to that poor man in the plane. I didn't want to be a part of it."

Cedric simply walked out of his job, his career, his vocation, and returned home to Southend.

He found the first job he could, sweeping the floor in a Westcliff store. But he didn't stay in that position for long. Within a couple of years he had risen to director level.

Cedric went on to run his own building firm in Southend, Bell and Hodgkins. He might have given up on the aviation industry, but Cedric had taken flight once again.

These days, he lives comfortably with his second wife in Chalkwell Avenue, surrounded by paintings of aircraft. But for the second time in his life, Cedric Hodgkins has given up on aviation.

"I detest modern airports," he says. "They are miserable places. I've had more than one holiday ruined by what happened at the airport. So no more of that for me."

It has taken 81 years since that first flight, but Cedric Hodgkins has finally decided to stick to terra firma.