Flying to the Past: Croydon to Persepolis - New Event Announcement

Olley Expedition Photograph,
Persepolis (Croydon Airport Society)

If any of you enjoyed the blog on Aerial Photographs of the Middle East in the 1930s, you can come and find out more at an event on Saturday 26 September where the film the flight was made for will be screened.

The ancient past meets modernism with a juxtaposition of 1930s aerial photography, film, archaeology, celebrity pilots and archaeologists. Come to Croydon Airport to find out more about lost empires and the people who recorded their excavation.

A tour of Croydon Airport between 1-2pm will be followed by a seminar in the neighbouring Aerodrome Hotel and a screening of The Human Adventure, a 1935 film on archaeology in the Middle East produced by the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. This film will be screened together with photographs taken by the Imperial Airways pilot chartered for the expedition, Captain Gordon P. Olley, from Croydon Airport Society's archives. Introductory talks by academics Lindsay Allen (Kings College London) and Amara Thornton and Michael McCluskey (University College London's Filming Antiquity project www.filmingantiquity.com) will explore the connections between aviation, archaeology and discovering the past in the 1930s.

Saturday 26 September 1-4.30pm. 

Olley Expedition Photograph, 
Persepolis (Croydon Airport Society)

(Airport tour 1-2pm; Seminar at Aerodrome Hotel 2.30-4.30pm)

Free. Booking essential via eventbrite
Croydon Airport & Aerodrome (Hallmark) Hotel, Purley Way, Croydon, CR0 0XZ
Organised by Croydon Airport Society as part of the Heritage Lottery Funded project Revealing the Hidden Heritage of Croydon Airport