The business was founded in
Scarborough by
Frederick Nicholas Slingsby, an
RAF pilot in World War I. In 1920 he bought a partnership in a woodworking and furniture factory in Queen Street, Scarborough. In 1930 Slingsby was one of the founders of the
Scarborough Gliding Club. After repairing some of the club's gliders, Slingsby's business built its first aircraft, a German designed
RRG Falke which flew in 1931. By late 1933 Slingsby was advertising training gliders for sale. In 1934, encouraged by a local landowner, the business moved to Kirkbymoorside, some 30 miles from Scarborough, operating as
Slingsby, Russell & Brown Ltd. As demand for gliders built up, a new factory was needed and built in
Welburn, just outside Kirkbymoorside. This opened in July 1939, when
Slingsby Sailplanes Ltd was founded. During the war Slingsby built parts for other company's aircraft as well as their own
military glider, the
Slingsby Hengist, though the latter did not see action. Towards the end of the war and afterwards the company produced large numbers of training gliders for the
Air Training Corps (ATC). After the war Slingsby continued to make increasingly refined gliders for civilian use in clubs and competitions. Their greatest success was with the
Sky at the 1952
World Gliding Championships, which finished in first, third and fourth place. The later
Slingsby Skylark series was their post war best seller. Slingsby began to move toward
glass reinforced plastic (GRP) and metal construction methods, but the company, trading as
Slingsby Aircraft Ltd since 1967, went into liquidation in July 1969 following a disastrous fire in the previous November. During the upheavals in the British aerospace and marine sector the company became
Slingsby Engineering, part of the public/private holding company
British Underwater Engineering (UBE). In July 1982
Slingsby Aviation was set up by, and as part, of Slingsby Engineering. Since then the company was owned by three individuals and was no longer a part of Cobham plc. On 8 January 2010,
Marshall Aerospace of
Cambridge acquired Slingsby Advanced Composites and rebranded the company as Marshall Slingsby Advanced Composites. In June 2025, Marshall Group sold Slingsby Advanced Composites to Axvik Group AB (publ), a Swedish company building a portfolio of specialist European aerospace and defence manufacturers. The company reverted to trading as Slingsby Advanced Composites. In 2020, the Company, then trading as Marshall Slingsby Advanced Composites, won the Aerospace Company of the Year in the Corporate Live Wire North England Prestige Awards. ==Aircraft==