https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....4d0d2c2674.jpg
Here is another photograph of it in a later state (there was only ever one built).

The windmill in the background says USA?

Not USA.
As a clue to its country of origin: it was flown by the owner (who was not the designer) up until the outbreak of WW I. Large parts of the structure were then converted into a rose pergola outside his back door.

Is the windmill an automatic course keeper, as found on sailing ships?

I don't think the windmill is part of the aeroplane, even in this version, and it seems to have a human course keeper installed here. As this flying contraption seems to be truly obscure, I might add that the designer (who was not the constructor) was very concerned with inherent stability, though this little effort is quite unlike his more usual style.

Designer wasn't one Igor Sikorski by any chance?

If you took Joan Hunter and gave her an e, the pursuit of game and two thousand pounds in 1910 you would have ..... (thank you, Fred)!

Not Igor Sikorski (oh dear, I nearly wrote Igor Stravinsky, and it wasn't him, either. Old age and confinement because of the pandemic plays havoc with the marbles).

I was wondering about that as a clue, but wondered if it was too (too) British. Though to disambiguate, we should make it clear it's pounds weight (or maybe mass), not pounds sterling.

Well there are enough strings for it to have been Stravinsky - or perhaps I should say piano wire?

Surely everyone knows who was furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun - whether they are a love struck subaltern or not. Tally ho! :)

I was rather surprised to discover that that was her real name. And the locale is, of course, apt too. You are obviously holding back, Armchair of the Skies. I don't suppose it would help anyone else if I were to reveal that the designer wrote a revolutionary book on dry fly trout fishing, designing his flies by considering how they would look from the trout's point of view. A man of quite remarkably diverse talents.

J R Hartley? :p

Hardley.

Brevity is the soul of wit, but not appreciated by the board software, hence bloviation.

I do think that I ought to terminate this agony by saying that the flying rose pergola was - according to the Venerable Fred Jane - designed in 1905/06 by John William Dunne and, in 1909/10, was constructed at Leysdown by the combined talents of Eustace & Oswald Short, Prof. Huntington and Mr Dunne. Reputedly it was the first inherently stable aeroplane. I wonder what became of it. Oh yes, I should have mentioned that it's the Dunne-Huntingdon of 1910.

Indeed. It is normally described as the Dunne-Huntington triplane, but because the foremost plane is smaller than the others, it is sometimes called a canard biplane with extreme stagger; it could also be described as a monoplane with three surfaces. After re-engining for more power, it flew successfully.

Dunne's life story, in brief: he enlisted as a trooper for the Second South African War, and was invalided home; commissioned, he went out again, and was again invalided with a heart condition, and turned to designing the swept wing tailless designs for which he is well known. He wrote the book on fly fishing, before turning to an attempt to reconcile the new ideas of time generated by the theory of relativity with parapsychology (which was at the time thought worthy of investigation by serious people); the first of his books on that is An Experiment with Time, which is, although wrong, quite rational and devoid of woo. At the age of 52 he married Miss Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, and they had two children; stories he told them were published as The Jumping Lions of Borneo. The sort of life that makes one feel a little inadequate.

Oh, apparently it really was turned into a pergola in 1914.

Interesting story and interesting aeroplane, thanks! I did look at a Dunne at some point due to the similarity between the swept canard and his tailless designs, but never found this one. Oh well...

Let us stay in the times of Those Magnificent Men. This one has connections with Selfridges!

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....0b5f97fba8.jpg

I'll have a stab at a Serge de Bolotoff Triplane 2

Argh, your revised stab has hit the mark. For more on the de Bolotoff saga see http://sussexhistoryforum.co.uk/inde...33704#msg33704. We look forward to the next mystery from you, nvubu.