Lady Icarus Revised

This promo includes original interview material with Elinor Smith, Chris Burton and Pearse Cahill - all in their 90s.

From the Hugh Lane Art Gallery Website - wasn't aware they had this portrait.

John Lavery
An Irish Pilot

This wonderful painting by one of Ireland’s best loved portrait painters John Lavery features the fascinating Lady Heath, born Sophie Pierce Evans in Limerick. For a five-year period from the mid-1920s, pilot Lady Mary Heath was one of the best-known women in the world. It was an era when everyone had gone aviation mad, she was the first woman to parachute and the first woman to gain a commercial pilot’s licence. In 1928 Lady Heath made front-page news worldwide as the first pilot ever, male or female, to fly a small, open cockpit plane solo from Cape Town to London. Back home in Ireland in the 1930s, she was reputed to have landed her plane on every flat field in the country.

This fine portrait is in good condition, but its valuable, ornate frame is suffering from extensive flaking of the gilding. This requires urgent attention from a gilding conservator before it can be displayed. Intriguingly, the portrait appears to have been painted over a different composition and we hope to investigate this fascinating possibility by x-raying the painting.

Conservation costs €3000

Top picture: (Rear L-R) Mrs. S. C. Elliot-Lynn, Britain's first woman pilot, and her passenger Lady Bailey leaving plane after flight breaking world's altitude record for light airplanes, at Hamble Aerodrome.

Location:	United Kingdom
Date taken:	June 1927

THREE NEW GETTY PICTURES


















(Left) Long-distance aviator Lady Heath, the first woman to be engaged as a pilot on a passenger air-service, standing in front of a Dutch airline KLM Fokker passenger plane, with 1st pilot J Scholte. (Photo by Edward G Malindine/Getty Images)

(Above) 27th July 1928: Lady Heath (1897 - 1939), the first woman passenger line pilot, in the cockpit of the Fokker Air Liner owned by Royal Dutch Air Lines, after a flight from Amsterdam to Croydon. (Photo by MacGregor/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)



(left) 27th July 1928: Aviator Lady Sophie Mary Heath on arrival at Croydon aerodrome after her first flight (from Amsterdam) as an airline pilot for Royal Dutch Lines, making her the first woman in the world to fly a passenger aeroplane. Mynheer J Scholto is beside her. (Photo by Walter Bellamy/London Express/Getty Images)

A COUSIN'S MEMORIES OF SOPHIE
..."when an unsuitable cousin arrived in Aberdeen....This cousin was the famous baby that was carried in the carpet bag, the gipsy's child, already mentioned. She had grown up to be an athlete of distinction, held the British women's championship in fencing - or was it javelin throwing? - and just after the war she came to Aberdeen with a university appointment of a minor sort. Agitated letters reached my mother from Aunt Lucie and others in Ireland: "For Mercy's sake, Lily, don't let Sophie get hold of the girls." I was in my first year at Aberdeen University and very interested to see this Irish cousin, who came to tea in a stylish fur coat. She had a husband, but he happened to be in Africa....She soon made a name for herself as a pilot of considerable daring and skill, at a time when very few women flew at all. .... In a club in London in the late 1920s, I heard her discussed, her charm and vitality and her gifts, and trickling through the conversation a suggestion of warning...."
From "So Much Love, So Little Money" by Lyn Irvine (London 1957), whose mother Lilian Lloyd grew up in Mount Etna; Lilian's father was Edward Lloyd. Her grandmother was Anne Locke.
In 1934, Lyn Irvine married the Cambridge mathematician Max Newman; he was part of the Bletchly Hall group that broke the Enigma code in the Second World War.

Daragh Dukes and his friends in the Dublin band Headgear have written a lovely, gentle song called "Icarus Girl" inspired by Lady Mary and her life. Hear it at:
http://www.myspace.com/headgearmusic

Indeed, Daragh has written an entire album of songs based on his fascination with flight. Worth a listen.

lady Icarus

Promo for "Lady Icarus" documentary project. Pass on the word - the more interest we generate, the better the chance of the movie getting made.

Pathe news . Pioneer aviator. Lady Heath

Lady Mary after her awful accident. You can see the damage done to her face.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRqPIZSCl6Y
Now for 'Lady Icarus - the Movie", which will tell the story of Irish aviator Lady Mary Heath, who flew from Cape Town to London solo in 1928. To get backing at the
Sheffield Documentary Festival it needs LOTS of hits, so pass on the word (please!) and add your comments. We really need to get this film made soon, since the number of people of her generation who still remember Lady Mary is getting fewer by the minute.

Beautiful in its design concept and wonderful in its reality, named after Lady Heath, the pioneering aviator who flew into aviation history from Ireland's first civil aerodrome in Kildoran, Finglas. Seventy-two residences of suberb quality and style in Finglas Village, close to all facilities. Magnificent raised garden centrepiece in its enclosed courtyard.

Architect : Project Architects
Engineers : John B. Barry & Partners
Quantity Surveyors : Mark Foran & Associates

Fame at last for Lady Mary - a housing estate in her name!