I've run both copies of Aeroplane to ground - blimey! May and June 2003...
No mention of the ditch accident at Redhill BUT in Michael Jones's book "Tiger Club - the Redhill Saga" it is mentioned as having occurred in the spring of 1985. Presumably the delay in purchase of the wreck by Penrose was pending legal/insurance wrangles?
Regarding Q1, according to the Aeroplane article (by Martin Barraclough) implies is that Crabtree owned it and following the forced landing, he donated it to the Historic Aircraft Preservation Society (HAPS) at Booker, and resold to a "museum" at Blackpool (was this Reflectair?) who cut through the main spar in 1970...
British Civil Aircraft Volume 3 says that the aircraft was re-engined with a Gipsy Queen 2 in 1962 by Appleyard at Yeadon and flown by Ernie Crabtree... Crabtree was Northern Air Taxis wasn't he?
Finally, after acquiring the Mew in '72, Storey and Barraclough recovered the vandalised airframe from Blackpool, but also sundry parts from Bob Batt presumably from Southend and also Roger Steele a BEA engineer.
Plate of spaghetti.... Do you want a PDF of any of this?
Cheers
Treadders
PS, probably sacrilege to say this, but I prefer the Storey restoration - it's a far more elegant aircraft to look at than Henshaw's modified aircraft, though I know the mods were necessary to make it the record breaker it became! I can still remember visiting the Tiger Club hangar in early July 1978 and beholding a beautiful shape lurking inside...!