Croydon was almost the death of not one but two Prime Ministers of Great Britain.
Who was the only British Prime Minister to be assassinated? It's a good pub quiz question, and then answer, in case you didn't know, is Spencer Perceval — shot dead in the Houses of Parliament in 1812.
But did you know that another British Prime Minister — William Pitt the Younger — was also very nearly shot dead... by accident? And the incident happened in Croydon. The story goes that when serving as Prime Minister, Pitt was riding back from a party hosted by Lord Liverpool at Addiscombe Place. Racing across Croydon Common on horseback, Pitt was most likely engaging in a spot of drink-riding (he's said to have put away a bottle of port before breakfast, a second bottle before tea and a third bottle before supper on a daily basis — but it's OK because his doctor told him to), when he rode straight through a turnpike without paying, and was duly fired at by whoever was on watch. Presumably they didn't realise they were firing at Pitt — and by being a less-than-accurate shot, they saved themselves from landing in seriously hot water. (The toll-dodging PM, as it happens, is the same man responsible for introducing income tax to Britain.)
And Pitt wasn't the only Prime Minister to very nearly perish at Croydon. It was also the setting for a near miss for the best-known PM of all, Winston Churchill. Churchill — who was Secretary of State for Air between 1919 and 1921 — adored flying, but was not to be trusted behind the joystick himself. One summer evening in 1919, when flying at Croydon Aerodrome, Churchill almost did for himself and his instructor. He later recalled in his memoirs, Thoughts and Adventures:
The aeroplane was just turning from its side-slip into the nose dive, when it struck the ground at perhaps fifty-miles-an-hour with terrific force. I felt myself driven forward as if in some new dimension by a frightful and overwhelming force, through a space I could not measure.
The quick thinking of Churchill’s instructor, who turned off the ignition to prevent the plane from bursting into flames, saved them both, and Churchill got away with bad bruising. This was one of three self-inflicted plane crashes Churchill had at the aerodrome and he was eventually coaxed away from cockpits altogether. As is well documented, Churchill, like Pitt, was also fond of a tipple, although in this case there's no evidence he was drink-flying. He was just a bloody awful pilot.
Thousands more Croydon facts like these can be found in my new book, Croydonpolis: A Journey to the Greatest City That Never Was. You can get 10% off when buying from the publisher, Safe Haven using the code CROYDON10
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