The photograph seen here depicts a Beardmore W.B.III, the unstaggered folding-wing version of the Sopwith Pup. This photo is stuck incongruously and uncaptioned in the back of an album mainly featuring pre-First World War aeroplanes. The album's original owner was pioneer pilot John Roderick Charles Herbert Spottiswoode, who served in the Royal Naval Air Service during the First World War. The photo shows the W.B.III in what appears to be the courtyard of a private property, a strange location for a military aeroplane, which leads me to wonder whether, in the early post-war years, Spottiswoode acquired one of the numerous examples that went straight into storage, intending to use it as his personal runabout. However, there appears to be no record of a W.B.III going on to the civil register.

ON THIS PAGE in TAH22 I featured a Sopwith Dragon serving as a photographer's seaside prop in the 1920s, in the hope that someone might be able to provide further information. Unfortunately it drew no responses, but a few months ago I acquired another shot of it which adds a mite to our knowledge. It is not the best of images, and has its blemishes, but it shows the other side of the fuselage, and an inscription is visible and partly legible. I believe it reads: "The Skegness Skylark", so now we know where it was, but further information is still sought.