Aviation museum's £10m expansion plan approved

An aviation museum is planning to expand to display more of its collection of vintage aircraft - with six "secret" warplanes being unveiled at the attraction.

The Avro Heritage Museum in Stockport, Greater Manchester, opened 10 years ago on the site of the former BAE Systems factory in Woodford, where military planes were built for almost 90 years.

It houses a range of fabled aircraft including a replica of a Lancaster bomber and a full-scale model of an Avro Type F, the first aircraft in the world with a fully enclosed cockpit.

"We have six complete aeroplanes, ranging in years from 1908 to 2011, in a secret storage location and we need a home for them," museum chairman Terry Barnes said.

"We're going to be able to display the aircraft to protect the legacy of the Avro company, which was the driving force of the aviation industry in Manchester."

The extension to the museum, which has been approved by Stockport Council, is expected to cost more than £10m and a fundraising campaign is set to be launched later this year.

Aviation pioneer Alliott Verdon-Roe, who was born in Patricroft near Eccles, launched theAvro company inside a cotton mill in Ancoats in 1910.

The firm built planes for the Royal Flying Corps during World War One and set up a factory, including an airfield, on farmland at Woodford in 1924.

The company made aircraft including the Anson, the Vulcan, the Nimrod spy plane and the Lancaster bomber at the site before it eventually closed in 2011.

As part of a deal to sell the land for housing, BAE Systems funded the renovation of the former aerodrome fire station, which became the Avro Heritage Museum.

The planes on display also include a Vulcan bomber, which was built in 1963, and a virtual reality experience of a bombing raid over Berlin, with footage filmed by the BBC.

More than 3,000 Lancaster bombers were assembled at Woodford during World War Two after the legendary warplanes were built in Chadderton and transported by road across Manchester.

Ian Lomax, a trustee at the museum, said: "Its awe-inspiring to think that this Lancaster bomber went through 137 operational sorties during World War Two.

"Every day this aircraft was going out on bombing roads over Germany, Italy and occupied Poland and it survives to this day."

The museum attracts about 13,000 visitors per year and it is hoped the extension could help that figure rise to 20,000.

Many of the planes which are now in storage were previously on display at Manchester's Museum of Science and industry.

The collection includes the Avro Shackleton AEW Mark 2 - a long-range maritime patrol aircraft which was made at Woodford in 1954.

Another aircraft is the Avro 707C, a prototype built to test the aerodynamics of the delta wing, which was later used on the Vulcan bomber and Concorde.