We tapped a rich vein in mentioning the Chisam family as yet another chapter emerges in the shape of World War One flying ace Harry Chisam, a grandson of Joseph Chisam of Whitehaven Cocoa and Coffee House fame.

Harry, born William Hargrove Chisam in 1894, was the son of William Edmund Chisam who was a founder of Seascale Methodist Church and lived at the Victorian villa, Norse Range in the village.

The adventurous Harry trained with those famous aviators the Wright brothers in Ohio, flew Sopwith Camels in World War One and served as a pilot with the Royal Naval Air Service, one of the forerunners of the RAF, of which he was a founder-member.

Before leaving America to return to Britain, and bent on playing his part in winning the war, Carlisle-born Harry had met US President Woodrow Wilson and the two men realised both their grandfathers had been Methodist preachers at the Annetwell Street chapel in Carlisle!

In 2009, Harry’s daughter Margaret Partington (nee Chisam), now 81 and living in Berkshire, published a book to her father’s memory, charting his many exploits. She co-wrote it with Andy Milne and it was produced by the Trevor Preece Publishing firm, of Seascale.

Margaret’s family, the Chisams, lived for 50 years
at Norse Range on Drigg Road, Seascale, a house built in 1909 by her great-grandfather.

Margaret lived there for a time herself, attending Calder Girls School in the
village (opened in 1884, closed in 1967, now a hotel). For many years she ran a hat-hire business in Datchet.

Her father had seen active air service during World War One (having paid for his own pilot’s training at $25 a lesson) and had risked his life many times, engaging the enemy over France, Belgium and the North Sea.

He crash-landed at Dunkirk and was shot down over the Somme but survived the war to live until he was 77.

In the 1990s Margaret went to America to meet Ivonette, a niece of the Wright brothers (neither brother had married) who showed Margaret her father Harry Chisam’s name engraved on a plaque at Dayton, Ohio, commemorating those
pioneers of aviation trained by the Wrights’ flying school.