Captain Howard Pixton, who had witnessed Waterbird being test-flown as a landplane at Brooklands, won the Schneider Trophy for a seaplane contest in 1914 at Monte Carlo. The Trophy was presented by Jacques Schneider, who shared the same great-grandfather as Henry Schneider, a Barrow-in-Furness industrialist who from 1869 until 1887 lived at Belsfield (a Hotel since 1892), Bowness-on-Windermere.

During World War 2, the Belsfield Hotel was requisitioned for training WAAF officers as 12 Officer Cadet Training Unit. Their varied duties included: Accounts, Air Raid Warning, Catering, Code and Cypher, Equipment, Filter [processing radar information], Intelligence, Ops ‘B’ [scrambling pilots into action], Photographic Interpretation, Radar, RAF Administration, Signals, and Torpedo Assessment.