Elliotts of Newbury

Elliotts of Newbury was a British company that became well known for manufacturing gliders

The company was founded by Samuel Elliott in 1870 as a joinery works as "Elliott’s Moulding and Joinery Company Ltd" It produced ammunition boxes during the First World War made by a workforce of 90 per cent women. It changed to furniture production after the war. In the Second World War, once more a largely female workforce produced components for aircraft, including the Supermarine Spitfire, Tiger Moth, De Havilland Mosquito, the Airspeed Oxford and the Airspeed Horsa glider. Elliotts built about one third of the total Horsa production and it was also responsible for a powered version of the General Aircraft Hamilcar glider.

At the end of the war, the firm had hoped to resume furniture manufacture but in those times of austerity this was not allowed by the Board of Trade. The company therefore planned to continue with aircraft production. Its first product was the Elliotts Newbury Eon four-seat light aircraft. However the company had also been asked in 1945 by Chilton Aircraft Ltd to make one set of wings for the Chilton Olympia, a glider that was a copy of the DFS Olympia Meise. To maintain employment, Elliotts retained the right to the wing jigs they had made. Chilton was unable to make more gliders by itself without the jigs from Elliotts, and so Chilton gave up all aircraft work, agreeing to sell to Elliotts the production rights, fuselage jigs, and work in hand on all their Olympia gliders. Production of the EoN Olympia commenced in 1946 as a batch of 100, and the first flight was made in January 1947.

The Olympia was followed in 1948 by the production of two further German-designed gliders, the Grunau Baby 2b known as the Baby EoN and the SG 38 Schulgleiter primary glider known as the Primary EoN. Elliotts and their design consultants Aviation & Engineering Products Ltd made improvements to each of the designs before starting production.

...
Wikipedia