How the Airport came to Heathrow .sx Philip Sherwood .sx The official version of the origin of Heathrow Airport has always been that it was developed as an airfield for the RAF in World War II and that at the end of the war it evolved into the main civil airport for London .sx In reality this is far from the truth and the true story behind its development reveals an amazing picture of political intrigue which misled the War Cabinet into giving approval for the its sic !sx construction .sx As a result development of the airport , which was conceived from the beginning as a civil airport for London , diverted resources away from the war effort at a time when London was under attack from V1 flying bombs and preparations were being made for the Normandy landings .sx I came across this story , almost by chance , when searching through the Air Ministry files in the Public Record Office .sx My main intention was to write an account of the history of the Heathrow up to the time that the airport transformed it from a purely agricultural area into the concrete jungle it has now become .sx I hoped that the files might contain photographs and other information that would help with this project ; it never occurred to me that they would reveal the chicanery that led up to the development of the airport .sx As a result of what was discovered in the files I expanded the scope of my project to include developments that occurred immediately prior to and during the construction of the airport .sx The result has been the publication of my book The History of Heathrow of which this article is a summary .sx .sx Heathrow before the airport .sx The Hamlet of Heathrow .sx The settlement of Heathrow was spread out in a straggling manner on the west side of Heathrow Road from the Bath Road to Perry Oaks ( see Figure 1) .sx Perry Oaks itself could almost be regarded as separate from Heathrow and it had direct access from the Bath Road via Tithe Barn Lane .sx The area was entirely rural in character as can be seen from the following quotation of Maxwell ( Highwayman's Heath 1935) :sx " If you turn down from the Bath Road by the 'Three Magpies' you will come upon a road that is as rural as anywhere in England .sx It is not , perhaps , scenically wonderful but for detachment from London or any urban interests it would be hard to find its equal ; there is a calmness and serenity about it that is soothing in a mad rushing world " .sx Agriculture .sx Before it was overwhelmed by the airport , West Middlesex had been an important market gardening area with Heathrow itself virtually in the centre of what remained of the Thames Valley Market Gardening Plain .sx The reason for this was that the brickearth soils of the Heathrow area by virtue of their texture , topography and drainage were ideally suited to intensive agriculture .sx Moreover , the inherent fertility of the soils had been greatly improved over the years by the addition of huge quantities of horse manure arising from the immense horse population of London .sx The Perry Oaks Sludge Works .sx A short distance past Perry Oaks Farm on the western side of what was Tithe Barn Lane was ( and still is ) the Perry Oaks sludge disposal works .sx These works , which now occupy an enclave of some 250 acres on the western edge of the airport , were opened by the Middlesex County Council in 1935 as part of the West Middlesex Main Drainage Scheme .sx The main sewage works is at Mogden , Isleworth where sludge is separated from the sewage and , after initial treatment at Mogden , is pumped over a seven mile distance to Perry Oaks .sx The presence of the sludge works has proved to be a thorn in the side of the aviation authorities and as will be seen later they have been trying with little success for the past 45 years to relocate the sludge works .sx The Fairey Aerodrome .sx Aviation at Heathrow started in 1929 with the purchase by the Fairey Aviation Company of 150 acres of land in Cain's Lane .sx Here they laid out an area of high quality turf to construct an airfield which was used for the first time in the late summer of 1930 .sx The airfield was purchased as a result of the Company having been given notice by the Air Ministry to vacate leased premises at Northolt which the company used for flight testing .sx The Heathrow site proved just as convenient as Northolt and had the advantage that the company held the freehold -little did they know that the Air Ministry , having expelled them from Northolt , would eventually compulsorily acquire their new site at Heathrow !sx Because of the obvious advantages the company decided to expand the site so that it could transfer the factory from Hayes to Heathrow , thus bringing the works and flight testing facilities together .sx The presence of the airfield did little to disturb the rural scene , it had no concrete runways , few buildings and only a small number of test flights .sx The airfield was , in fact , quite a local attraction as it was a novelty then to see aero - planes at such close quarters .sx From 1935 until 1939 the aerodrome was the venue for the garden party of the Royal Aeronautical Society .sx figure&caption .sx The Fairey aerodrome and the large number of people in the aviation world who visited it at the time of the Garden Parties were undoubtedly what led the aviation interests to cast covetous eyes on Heathrow as a site for a civil airport for London .sx However , if war had not broken out in 1939 it would have proved impossible for them to acquire Fairey's airfield and the surrounding land .sx The war presented the opportunity for the whole area to be requisitioned and to begin the development of a civil airport under the pretext that it was needed as a base for the RAF .sx Origins of the development .sx The first recorded mention of the proposals in the Air Ministry files ( listed in the PRO principally under AVIA 2 and BT 217 ) , is in mid 1943 .sx It is clear from these that right from the start the development was envisaged as being for civil aviation .sx The proposal for its development as a Royal Air Force base was merely a ruse to circumvent a public inquiry and to quell criticism that the war effort was being diverted to matters that could await the end of hostilities .sx It was not until 1973 in the autobiography ( Wings Over Westminster 1973 ) of Harold Balfour ( later Lord Balfour of Inchrye ) that the truth was finally admitted .sx Balfour was the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Air between 1938 and 1944 and in his autobiography he makes the astonishing claim :sx " Almost the last thing I did in the Air Ministry of any importance was to hi-jack for Civil Aviation the land on which London Airport stands under the noses of resistant Ministerial colleagues .sx If hi-jack is too strong a term I plead guilty to the lesser crime of deceiving a Cabinet Committee .sx Within the Department those of us who had studied post-war civil aviation needs knew that spreading out from the Fairey Aviation Company's small grass aerodrome on the Great West Staines Road was land ideal for London's main airport .sx We also knew that any thought of trying to get the land for civil aviation would have to go through complicated civil procedures .sx .. " I confess now that in our hearts we knew of several bomber air - fields in the Home Counties which could have been made to do the job just as well .sx The proposal came to the Cabinet who referred the issue to a committee under the Lord President , Sir John Anderson .sx The Committee met and I represented the Air Ministry .sx I found that Beaverbrook who was still in the Government was also a member .sx I took him into my confidence as to the real reason we were pressing for what we were sure was London's best chance of a great civil airport .sx He played up well .sx ..... " I advanced as powerfully as I could the case ( for requisitioning the Heathrow site) .sx I did not dare to breathe the words 'Civil Aviation' .sx I put this right out of my mind so effectively that I really convinced myself of the priority of our case .sx The Cabinet came down on our side .sx We took the land .sx " .sx This account seems so improbably that it has been given little credence , being seen merely as the idle boasts of a senile old man who had lost the wit to distinguish fact from fantasy .sx However , the Air Ministry files make it abundantly clear that Balfour's account is substantially correct .sx The proposals for development envisaged construction in three stages , and at a meeting of the Anderson Committee ( i.e. the one to which Balfour refers ) a recommendation was passed on to the War Cabinet that approval to develop Stage 1 should be given .sx At a meeting two days later on 12 November 1943 the war Cabinet provisionally accepted this recommendation .sx This opened the way for the development to begin but , as will be seen later , there were still several difficulties to be overcome including worries abut the legality of the action being taken .sx On this point advice was sought from the Treasury Solicitor in a minute dated 4 February 1944 which gives the information that , " On the matter generally you should be aware that the ultimate object is to provide a suitable ( civil ) airport for London .sx Were there no other object it would be a question of Civil Aviation only and presumably Defence Regulations could not have been used for obtaining provision of land for use for normal peace-time purposes " .sx The solicitor's reply is not preserved in the files but the minute leaves no doubt of the true intentions of those concerned within the Air Ministry who pursued their aim with a fanatical zeal .sx Factors affecting the development .sx Two factors inhibited the Air Ministry's proposals :sx one was the presence of the sludge disposal works at Perry Oaks , the other to a much lesser extent was the Fairey aerodrome .sx Three other factors which might be thought to have played a part , i.e. noise , agriculture and the fate of the inhabitants who were to be evicted from their homes , were completely ignored .sx The Perry Oaks Problem .sx The proposals as approved at the first meeting involved the resiting of the Perry Oaks sludge disposal works .sx Figure 3 , dated October 1943 , shows the runways to be constructed as part of Stage 1 of the development in black .sx The main east-west runway on the map is further south of the Bath Road than at present with the sludge works being incorporated into the airport as part of the Stage 2 development .sx figure&caption .sx The Defence of the Realm Act 1939 , which was used to acquire the land for development , allowed the authorities to requisition at short notice land deemed to be needed in connexion with the pursuit of the war without any right of appeal .sx In theory the sludge works could therefore have been acquired under the Act .sx But there was the practical difficulty that the works could not just be closed down ; another site would have to be found .sx Long and ill-tempered negotiations were held with the Middlesex County Council which owned the works but the Council could see no possibility of finding an alternative site without resort to a public inquiry .sx This the Air Ministry was determined to avoid at all costs as an inquiry would have revealed the true reasons behind the acquisition of the land .sx Rather than face a public inquiry the Air Ministry revised the layout of the airport which avoided taking the works in the first instance .sx The frustration felt by the Ministry over the problem can be seen in the letter from the Ministry to the Middlesex County Council dated 1 May 1944 which says :sx figure&caption .sx " I am directed to inform you that the increasing urgency of the need for an adequate airfield in the London area for the war requirements of the RAF and the inevitable delay which would arise in removal of your Council's sludge works from the Perry Oaks site has made it essential to adopt an amended lay-out which will avoid the immediate necessity for interference with the land in your Council's possession .sx ....