Spitfire Island

Introduction

The photograph on this page of Spitfire Island by Anthony Cox as part of the Geograph project.

The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.

There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk

Spitfire Island

Image: © Anthony Cox Taken: 13 Jun 2005

Spitfire Island is next to the factory where Spitfires were built, now the Jaguar Factory, at Castle Bromwich just off Junction 5 of the M6. The sculpture on the island celebrates the Spitfire and is called "Sentinel Spitfire". It makes little attempt to mimic the aerodynamic shape of a Spitfire, the Spitfires being aluminium cut-outs, but captures the essence of the plane - with a triptych of Spitfires fanning out into the sky. The steel support structure rises up from the ground to the soaring planes above; a perfect way of illustrating how this area was the place where 11,989 Spitfires were built and rose up from the ground to defend the country from fascism. The sculpture was designed by J.R.R. Tolkien’s great nephew Tim Tolkien; who is now attempting to get an Ent installed in another area of Birmingham.

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