Heathrow or Heath Row was a wayside hamlet along a minor country lane called Heathrow Road in the ancient parish of Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, on the outskirts of what is now Greater London. Its buildings and all associated holdings were demolished, along with almost all of the often grouped locality of The Magpies in 1944 for the construction of the new London Airport, which would later assume the name of Heathrow after 1967.

The name Heathrow described its layout: a lane, on one side smallholdings and farms of fields and orchards which ran for a little over , on the other, until the 1819 Inclosure for farmland, common land: a mixture of pasture, hunting and foraging land on less fertile heath. Akin to Sipson Green it was a scattered agricultural locality of Harmondsworth. The two lightly populated places dotted the brickearth-over-gravel soils in the east of Harmondsworth which historically butted on to Hounslow Heath. Yards from the lane, while the heath existed, General William Roy mapped one end of the first baseline for measuring the distance between the Paris and Greenwich observatories, the first precise distance survey in Britain, in 1784.

By the late 19th century Heathrow had developed three main agricultural settlement clusters with orchards and fields worked by teams of labourers – Heathrow Hall, Perrotts Farm and on some measures Perry Oaks at a fork in the southwest end of the lane. Abutting The Magpies, east along the Bath Road, Sipson Green also lay in Harmondsworth, covered in the article on the hamlet-turned-village of Sipson. A small orchard founded before the 19th century Kings Arbour, Harmondsworth, separated The Magpies from Heathrow. The Magpies had a mission church of the parish and has kept one of its pre-1765 public houses, The Three Magpies.

History

thumb|245px|right|Map of Heathrow and around in 1948

thumb|245px|The [[Hounslow Heath baseline and Heathrow Airport's perimeter and 2 main runways superimposed on an Ordnance Survey map of 1935]]

For a timeline of Heathrow events, see Heathrow timeline.

Extent and development

By the 1910s the amenities of Heathrow had grown little since the, at latest, 15th-century laying out of the lane.

It spanned, north–south, from Kings Arbour orchard to Perry Oaks farm (which sat at the junction of the lane and another). An agricultural cluster of buildings and great house Heathrow Hall were slightly toward the north of the lane. All the homes and farms clung to this 90° turning lane, a turn staggered by two bends. Detailed 1910s maps show its unusual continuing agricultural focus so close to London; about half of the buildings and homes were at the two farms. It will be re-sited or see elements curated in a museum if a third runway for Heathrow Airport receives final planning permission and all appeals are dismissed.

Founding and early history

A sizeable Neolithic settlement is believed to have been in the Heathrow area. Many artefacts have been found in the gravel around what is now the airport, and the Colne Valley regional park. Waste pits filled with struck flint, arrowheads and fragments of pottery were also found in the area, indicating a settlement, though none other remains of such a settlement.

Heathrow was one of the last settlements formed in the parish of Harmondsworth. Its name was rendered in various orthographies which reflect approximately the same pronunciation as today La Hetherewe (about year 1410, first known mention), Hithero, Hetherow, Hetherowfeyld, Hitherowe, and Heath Row/Heathrow, Middle English spellings of "heath row" (simply a row (impliedly of houses) on or by a heath). Old maps show Heathrow as a row of houses along the northwest sides of the curve of a lane occasionally named Heathrow Road or Lane, which faced land until 1819 part of a great set of common lands belonging to neighbouring parishes — Hounslow Heath. The first orthography as "Heathrow" dates to 1453.

The marker and landmarks on the Bath Road enables visitors and historians to picture features on old maps when visiting today's airport, without the use of grid references.

Great West Aerodrome

In 1929, Fairey Aviation bought of land just southeast of Heathrow hamlet, to establish an airfield for flight testing; later purchases gradually enlarged the aerodrome to about . It came to be called the Great West Aerodrome, which in 1944 was greatly enlarged to become London Airport, which was later renamed as Heathrow Airport.

Development

Agriculture became the main source of income for residents in the hamlet, as the brickearth just as the underlying gravel in soils in the area made for reliable farming for fruit trees and bushes, vegetables, and flowers as it held manure well and markets were in easy reach of these perishable cash crops. Clay soil in other parts of England favoured potatoes and chalk favoured grains. Most residents and seasonal labourers joined in the large west Middlesex market gardening industry. Many residents grew which they would travel with into London to sell, on the return journey collecting manure for farming. No buildings equally stood on the south side of this major thoroughfare.

Other than a few homes and gardens, six farms held land which became the airport in the 1930s, as documented in principal feature maps.

Heathrow was away from main roads and further away from railways; that kept it secluded and quiet although near London. As Middlesex changed to market gardening and fruit growing to supply expanding London, parts of Heathrow held on to old-type mixed farming, and thus was chosen for Middlesex area horse-drawn ploughing competitions, which needed land which was under stubble after harvest.

The ford where High Tree Lane crossed the Duke of Northumberland's River was a scenic spot used sometimes for picnics and courting couples. There was a footpath along beside the river from the ford to Longford.

The Middlesex Agricultural and Growers' Association held annual ploughing matches in Heathrow, until the last, the 99th, was held on 28 September 1937; and Perry Oaks farm, which was Elizabethan.

In the 19th century much brickearth-type land in west Middlesex, including in Heathrow, was used for orchards of fruit trees, often several sorts mixed in one orchard. Much soft fruit was grown, often in the orchards under the fruit trees. Sometimes vegetables, or flowers for cutting, were grown under the fruit trees. An author in 1907 reported "thousands and thousands" of plum, cherry, apple, pear, and damson trees, and innumerable currant and gooseberry bushes, round Harmondsworth and Sipson and Harlington and Heathrow.

In the 1930s Heathrow Hall and Perry Oaks were mixed farms with wheat, cattle, sheep and pigs, and the other farms were largely market gardening and fruit growing. Photographs from early in the 20th century show to the southeast, at Cain's Farm facing modest Heathrow House, milk cattle (about 22 in the photograph) and the yearly horse-drawn ploughing competition on Cain's Lane. Later examples show such competitions in the far north-east near Tithe Barn Lane on Heathrow Hall land. In the 1910s a small gravel pit of just under an acre was on the east side of Tithe Barn Lane at the far west of what could be loosely, based mainly on Heathrow Hall's ownership be considered part of Heathrow and a similar marsh then pond to the north, all where today's Compass Centre stands.

Archaeology

Caesar's Camp

Caesar's Camp, also called Schapsbury Hill and Shasbury Hill, was a square, Early Iron Age, British (not Roman) fort site of c. 500 BC, south of Bath Road, about halfway between Heathrow Road and Hatton Road, and a bit north of due east of Heathrow Hall. It was about square (c. 1820 measurement) or square (1911 measurement). It survived because it was on common land until the enclosure of the commons of Harmondsworth parish, after which the fort's ramparts were fairly quickly ploughed out.

It was excavated hurriedly in 1944: see timeline below. Inside its rampart 15 circular hut sites were found, and a large rectangular building which was probably a temple. The east end of the north runway obliterated it.

Fern Hill

Fern Hill was another ramparted prehistoric site, represented in 1944 by a roughly circular cropmark about in diameter, near Hatton Cross. The site is now partly under an aircraft hangar.

Industry

A brickearth and gravel quarry and brick works was opened in the 1930s. At a survey in 1934 the quarry was , of which was lake. Later it expanded to the northeast and finally the lake was about long. and was wound up in 1944.

A sewage sludge works was built in the Perry Oaks part of Heathrow in 1934, and a gauge railway installed three years later. Improvements were made in the 1950s and 1960s, and the works were eventually demolished in 2002 to make way for Terminal 5.

;Timeline of the sludge works

Education

Heathrow School was founded in 1875, as Heathrow Elementary School, on land given by George Stevens Byng, 2nd Earl of Strafford by the north side of Bath Road. The school opened two years later and was enlarged in 1891. In time the school was renamed 'Sipson and Heathrow School', because more than half its pupils came from Sipson.

After the construction of Heathrow Airport started in 1944, the school was affected by aircraft noise from the north runway. Pupils from the few Perry Oaks cottages for more than a year travelled by taxi to avoid construction works, until its sludge-to-fertiliser farm led to the end of almost all its homes. In 1962 the school lost its playing field when an airport access road was built and four years later it moved to Harmondsworth Lane in Sipson, and became Heathrow School again. The school's current logo is a Concorde in flight.

See also

  • Charlton, Bristol, another village in England which was demolished to make room for an airport

References

;References

;Notes

  • Heathrow – The Lost Hamlet by Philip Sherwood