Volunteers running Britain’s oldest aviation museum got some extra help when a nine-strong team from British Telecom arrived at the Salisbury Hall site ready to do a day’s work.

The team completed a variety of tasks from cleaning some of the de Havilland aircraft on display to weeding and tidying up the site they also had the chance to see work in progress on conserving some of Britain’s aviation heritage.

As well as being Britain’s oldest aviation museum, founded in the 1950s, Salisbury Hall is the only museum in the world which has as many as three examples of the Mosquito, which was designed there when de Havilland moved its project from its Hatfield site to the hall, and where the initial prototypes were also built, and where later the Horsa troop-carrying glider was designed.

The museum was the choice of Graham Wood, business operations manager for BT Technology Service and Operations Architecture and Global IT Platforms team.

He said: "BT have a community challenge where their people can donate their labour for up to three days a year to charities and organisations which would like help and support.

"I have a particular interest in aviation and as I had organised one event at RAF Cosford aviation museum I was asked to arrange a similar one in the north London area."

The volunteers also helped clean aircraft such as the de Havilland Tiger Moth bi-plane and DH110 Sea Vixen.

The museum will close to the public on November 2 for its winter break. Details can be found on its website www.dehavillandmuseum.co.uk