Collection AR524 - Frank Grant Papers

Photograph of Frank Grant as a corporal in Royal Flying Corps uniform; RFC forage cap, button and sergeants stripes; First World War medal and ribbon; Surrey Flying Services Ltd memorandum and Articles of Association, 1931; photograph of Avro G-EBFW owned by Surrey Flying Services; photocopies of newspaper clipping re purchase of Cessna plane, and photographs of Frank Grant with Cessna C-34 and his pilots.

Frank Grant (uncle of donor) was born in Hooe in 1896, and served in the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War as a Corporal and later as a Sergeant. He moved to Purley in the 1920s, where he met and married his wife Kathleen. He formed Surrey Flying Services, based at Croydon Airport, in 1921, and the firm became a limited company in 1931. In 1936 he went to New York with a Mr Turner, a noted British pilot, where he was appointed agent for the Cessna Aircraft Co in Britain and other European countries. Mr Turner subsequently bought the first Cessna-C34 through Grants agency. Grant spent the Second World War as an Aircraft Engineer at a factory at Sanderstead, and after the war joined the Civil Service. He died in 1959.