I guess Cayley in 1808, but that was a manned glider.
First all British ( and world ) aircraft to fly under its own power would be John Stringfellows 1848 steam powered monoplane ( based on Hensons Steam carriage) and of a more practical configuration than many later dead-end designs e.g. Wrights.
Later on Roe made the first manned flight in an all British Aircraft on 19 July 1909.
Today aircraft of A V Roe heritage are still in service ( e.g. Avro 748 et seq) so a claim of longevity also probably belongs to his heritage.

Depends on how much importance you attach to Horatio Phillips’ flight on April 1907. He took off on level ground and remained aloft for maybe 500-600 feet, which at 30mph means about 12 seconds or so in still air.
This is what the Wrights managed in their first flight of December 17 1903, certainly in terms of time aloft. They, of course, managed a total of four flights that day, the lost being nearly a minute.
Phillips was unable or unwilling to repeat his brief flight, and if you think the Wright configuration was a dead-end, then have a look at Phillips’ contraption:
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/history/q0232.shtml
He deserves his place in history as a little bit more than just a footnote, even though Roe can rest safe in the knowledge that he was the first Briton to fly in a practical British aircraft – inasmuch as any aircraft of that era could be considered practical.

There’s also a version of the Caterham 7, which has a Japanese motorbike engine, called the ‘Hayabusa’.

Strictly speaking it’s a Suzuki Hayabusa motorbike, which lent its engine to the Caterham.
Did Suzuki have to negotiate with the heirs to Nakajima (ie Fuji Heavy Industries) to use the Hayabusa name, or was it assumed that no-one had any fixed rights to what is, after all, the name of a well-known Japanese bird of prey?
Another ‘double’ is the de Havilland/Wolsley Hornet, and there’s also the Donald Campbell/Nissan Bluebird. I suspect any rights claimed by the earlier version may not be all that enforceable.

A great “bitsa” – looks it might be by the same designer as the “Reindeer” in the film of Neville Shute’s “No Highway” 😀 😀 😀

Haven’t seen the film since I was a teenager, but my memory is that the Rutland Reindeer was a somewhat modified Avro Ashton. Google images is no help on this one – can anyone conform or confound my recollection?

I also think I’ve seen this one in the flesh, so to speak, in Luxembourg as wieesso says.

Will it be at L*g*nds?

A four-Nene Lancaster would present some interesting problems concerning the inner nacelles. Incorporating jet engines into nacelles along with the undercarraige would require some particularly creative design (putting it politely…) while the twin fins would sit in the middle of the jet efflux. Then there’s also the fact that the Lancaster is a tail-sitter, which doesn’t go at all wel with jet engines.
All in all, the necessary redesign would be so drastic you may as well start with a clean sheet of paper (and then call it Vulcan?)
Turboprops are rather more interestting. There were Dart-powered Wellingtons and B-17s, for completely different reasons, and I wonder whether the Shackleton MR3 shouldn’t have been a turboprop. As the Argosy wing was a Lincoln/Shackleton derivative it would have been a relatively low-cost project, I would imagine. I recall somewhere seeing an impression of a Mark 4 Shackleton with single fin and turboprops – at the least it would have save the hearing of many Shackleton crew. Does anyone have more concrete information?

Edit: I should have mentuioned the Douglas XB-42/XB-43 – piston and jet versions of effectively the same 1944-vintage bomber that perhaps answer the questions posed in the first post.

Peter Richardson was an architect in Liverpool who I knew slightly, and he died about three or four years ago – just dropped dead on board the yacht he was renovating out in North Wales.
When he wasn’t designing buildings or lecturing at Liverpool Polytechnic (now Liverpool John Moores Uni) he was a total aviation enthusiast and was also very much involved with the Hooton hangars project.
To the best of my knowledge his widow still lives at the address in Percy Street.

William

The Prowler video was great, but the soundtrack was a real blast from the past! Thanks for the memory.
I remember listening to Steppenwolf live al fresco in the early 70s when a Lancaster droned it way over the site. PA474 I’d guess, but wasn’t NX611 airworthy in those days?

William

I’ve resurrected this one ‘cos I was doing some idle Googling in a moment of boredom a few days ago and cross-referencing with dated photographs and souvenirs, and discovered that I had in fact seen NX611 on her very last flight before retirement.
Crikey, it’s taken me 37 years to nail that one!

http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/bA1.html

it’s a naked-eye object even from a well-lit suburb. Draw a line from the Pole Star to the Pleiades, and then search about half-way along with a pair of moderate-power bincoluars such as 7×50, and you should find it easily enough. Pretty well exactly overhead at midnight, btw.