Williams Fairey Engineering Band

The Fairey Band is a brass band based in Heaton Chapel in Stockport, Greater Manchester. Its name comes from Sir Richard Fairey and the Fairey Aviation company, famous in later years for the Fairey Delta 2 aircraft - the first aircraft in level flight to exceed 1,000mph, and had an important contribution to the shape of Concorde and its droop nose. The band was formed in 1937 as the Fairey Aviation Works Band by workers at the aircraft factory. This was at a time when the company was producing aircraft that would see plenty of action in the first few weeks of World War II, although sadly few of its aircraft would be of sufficient calibre to pose a real threat to German aircraft. Its aircraft mainly carried torpedoes for the Fleet Air Arm. It became known as the Williams Fairey Band when Fairey Engineering was taken over by Williams Holdings in 1986. This company was bought by the American Kidde fire safety company in 2000, although the band retained the Williams Fairey name. The sponsorship by Kidde finished at the end of 2002. In 2003, they were sponsored by FP (Music), a subsidiary of Fosters Partners (Asia). Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.