PicoBlog

During the Second World War, the decision was made to locate Britain's principal civil airport at Heathrow.

Heath Row had been previously a small hamlet along a minor country lane called Heathrow Road in the ancient parish of Harmondsworth, Middlesex.

Heathrow's original buildings were demolished in 1944 for the construction of the airport

Here, we're going to take a tour of the old Heathrow hamlet at the time of the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 - I’ll be illustrating this post using an old 1939 map and the photos you'll see here largely date from that time.

The two views above show exactly the same footprint. One from 1939, and a satellite view from 2023.

In this post, we’ll be taking a circular “walk” starting at the Three Magpies pub on the Bath Road. Then we’ll walk into the hamlet of Heath Row, situated now just to the south of Heathrow Airport’s bus station.

We swing west towards the site of Terminal 5 but then called Perry Oaks, then north back to the Bath Road and finally along the Bath Road east to the Three Magpies.

Let’s start the walk…

The colour-coding of the 1939 map shows fields of crops (yellow), pasture (green) and market gardens/orchards (small green circles). Darker green is woodland and light blue shows water. At the junction of Bath Road and Heathrow Road in 1939 - and now, though the junction is gone - is the Three Magpies inn. We’ll start the walk south along Heathrow Road towards Heathrow Hall.

I’ve merged the older map and modern map above. Heathrow Hall from the first map lies on the bottom edge situated on top of Tunnel Road. Once that’s located it’s easier to get bearings in the modern view. West of The Magpies is the former “Concorde” roundabout.

The Magpies was a cluster of houses at the junction at the Bath Road and Heathrow Road. It’s still here at the modern northern entrance road into the airport but few are aware of its former name. It was called The Magpies as it had two pubs called after that particular bird - The Three Magpies and the Old Magpies.

If we turned down Heathrow Road here at the outbreak of war, we would have passed a row of houses - Doghurst Cottages - on the eastern side as we walked along. These cottages weren't too old - they were built around 1900. Photographs show them as brick-built, two-story houses with slate roofs.

Behind the cottages was King's Arbour. This was a small orchard set up before the 19th century.

Orchards were a major agricultural activity in this area. In 1784, within this particular orchard, General William Roy mapped one end of the first baseline for measuring the distance between the Paris Observatory and the Greenwich Observatory. This was the first precise distance survey in Britain. General Roy chose this orchard for his line end as it was near-flat, near Hounslow Heath barracks and only 15 miles from the Royal Observatory.

The first farmhouse going south along Heathrow Road was a rather undistinguished one on the east side known as Bathurst. In the 1930s, a Mr William Howell was recorded as living there.

Some distance east of Bathurst - off the map - there was a neolithic iron age settlement called Caesar's Camp. Alas, because they built the airport, all evidence of this was destroyed in 1944, despite a hurried archaeological survey.

Back on the map, further along on the west side of Heathrow Road was one of the largest farmhouses along it, known as Heathrow Hall.

Before the coming of the bulldozer, by the late 19th century the hamlet of Heath Row had developed three main agricultural settlement clusters with orchards and fields worked by teams of labourers. These were Heathrow Hall, Perrott’s Farm and Perry Oaks.

Heathrow Hall was an attractive 18th century building, occupied by one of several branches of the Philp family who farmed extensively in this area. In 1939, Frederick Philp was recorded as living here.

The farmhouse adjoined a typical English farmyard with sheep, pigs, cattle and many old barns.

Almost opposite Heathrow Hall on the other side of the road was a large pond which had probably started life as a gravel pit. This pond was surrounded by trees and reeds, and had a rich variety of wildlife including kingfishers.

Heathrow Road was renowned for being a riot of wild flowers in the springtime. These included red and white campion, willow herb and yellow iris beside the numerous ponds along the road.

In 1939, the Heathrow Brick Company applied to His Majesty's Land Registry to register one of the ponds as a very short-lived brickworks.

Opposite the (marked in brown) main building of the brickworks was Palmer's Farm though it is not labelled on the map. It was an early 17th-century farmhouse.

Perrot’s Farm was about a quarter of a mile south of Heathrow Hall on the west side of the road. Perrot’s Farm now lies directly under the former footprint of Terminal 1 (marked in purple below).

Just after passing Perrot’s Farm, there was a fork in the road called Wheatcut Corner. Though we’ll be heading southwest from this junction, it’s worth taking a brief foray along the road heading southeast from the corner - Cain’s Lane.

Cain’s Lane led as far as East Bedfont - in 1939 crossing the 1925-built Great South West Road (A30) to do so. It was dead straight, having been laid across Hounslow Heath by the enclosure commissioners in 1819.

Clearly marked on this map is “Airfield” - the genesis of Heathrow Airport.

Fairey Aviation moved here on 4 March 1929. The company originally bought 71 acres but later purchases gradually enlarged the aerodrome to about 240 acres. The airfield became called The Great West Aerodrome.

In 1943, the Air Ministry secretly developed plans to requisition the airfield under The Defence of the Realm Act of 1939.

The plans were stated as “suiting the needs of long-range bombers”. But the plans were actually based on confidential recommendations for a new international airport for London, replacing Croydon. The project was headed by Harold Balfour and he kept the true nature of it hidden from parliament.

Fairey soon learnt of the plans. The wartime legislation provided no obligation to pay compensation to Fairey and indeed, none was paid.

The whole area was served with eviction notices in May 1944.

We will backtrack to Wheatcut Corner and resume our journey west along Heathrow Road. Perrot’s Farm by 1819 was in the ownership of Martha Perrot - hence the name.

A half-timbered frontage was a feature of the farm buildings set back about 150 feet from the road. In its final years, this farm wasn't independent and Heathrow Farm used its buildings.

This part of Heathrow Road was the heart of the scattered Heath Row hamlet. The name described its layout - a row of houses on a lane beside a heath.

Heathrow Road marked a boundary. Most of the area to the south and east originally formed the edge of Hounslow Heath and the area to the north and west was originally one of the open fields of the parish. This was known as Heathrow Field.

In 1819, Heathrow Field was split into individual fields and many of the farms we are describing arrived to exploit the newly available land.

About 200 yards along Heathrow Road from its junction with Cain's Lane at Wheatcut Corner and on its north side was Heath Row's only pub - the Plough and Harrow.

It was a small building of no great distinction dating from the mid-19th century. Edgar Charles Basham, an ex-policeman, was the final publican at the time of the Second World War.

At the same time, a local trade directory listed George Dance as living in a small house directly opposite the pub. Behind his house was Wheatcut Field - a square area of orchard. In 1938, during the Munich Crisis, the Wild family took possession of the field, grubbed out the orchard and planted vegetables on the land.

Although most of the agricultural land in West Middlesex was in by 1939 use for market gardening, mixed farming was also practiced at Heath Row. This made living there more attractive than the rest of the locality - mixed farming unlike market gardening could in the 1930s coexist quite happily with trees and hedgerows.

Heathrow Farm, the next main 1939 building along our route, lay on the north side of Heathrow Road. It grew vegetables and cereals. The Curtis family were the final farmers and it dated from before the 1819 enclosures.

Soon after passing Heathrow Farm, there was a T-junction along Heathrow Road where High Tree Lane branched off to the left. This was another of the enclosure commissioner's 1819 roads, leading in a straight line, this time to West Bedfont.

At Goathouse Ford, this road crossed the Duke of Northumberland's River - constructed in the mid-16th century and designed to increase the flow powering Isleworth Mill. In 1944, the river was diverted to a more southerly route for about two miles of its length.

Rejoining Heathrow Road, there were quite a few residential buildings. These housed mainly agricultural workers, and during the 1930s, Heath Row’s only shop was here.

Heath Row had an unusual and continuing agricultural focus being so close to London.

The underlying brick earth and gravel made for reliable farming for fruit trees, vegetables and flowers. Often, several sorts of fruit were mixed in the orchards where a lot of soft fruit was grown - often under the fruit trees.

London markets were in easy reach of these perishable cash crops. Produce was taken to Covent Garden Market 14 miles away, or by smaller growers to Brentford Market.

Until motor lorries arrived on the scene, Covent Garden was about six hours away at laden horse and wagon speed. Goods had to set off before 10pm the previous evening to reach the market when it opened at 4am.

The next main location along the road was Perry Oaks. This was described as a most handsome red brick Elizabethan farmhouse. At the end of its days, it was occupied by Sydney Whittington from an old local farming family. It had some old barns, a dovecote and also a duck pond. It was considered the best of the many farmsteads of Heath Row.

With land sold by the Whittingtons, the Perry Oaks Sludge Works was opened in 1936 by Middlesex County Council. This was 200 acres of land occupied by lagoons in which sludge was allowed to settle under gravity.

The lagoons only disappeared in the late 1990s, making way for Heathrow Terminal 5.

Heathrow Road ends at Perry Oaks Farm. Oaks Road leads southwest and Tithe Barn Lane leads north - we'll follow the latter.

The lane got its name from a barn halfway along its western side. This was reputedly a reconstruction of the northern wing of the Great Barn of Harmondsworth,

Further north, the area at the junction of Tithe Barn Lane and Bath Road was known as Shepherd's Pool. This was a large pond completely surrounded by trees. It probably had started life as a gravel pit.

We have rejoined the Bath Rad midway between two notable pubs - the Three Magpies where we were earlier and the Peggy Bedford. Follow Bath Road east and we are back at The Magpies.

So what happened to the hamlet of Heath Row?

In wartime, dissent was frowned upon. There were no public inquiries and by 1945, everything had been demolished and tarmacked over. The home location of generations disappeared with their evictions.

Caesar's Camp - which had been there since the Iron Age - ended up under a runway. Some of the most fertile land in the London area went under concrete.

On 31 May 1946, the newly-named London Airport was officially opened for commercial operations.

Fairey's 1930 hangar was used as the airport's first fire station.

The very reason for abandoning Croydon Airport as being “surrounded by housing” is now true of Heathrow.

A lot of this material was based on work by a local historian called Philip Sherwood and I thank him for the inspiration.

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