Heathrow

Heathrow began as a scattered hamlet along a single lane called Heathrow Road on the edge of Hounslow Heath, in the old parish of Harmondsworth. The lane ran for about one mile through fields and orchards, with common land on one side until 1819. Three main clusters of farm buildings stood along the lane: Heathrow Hall, Perrotts Farm and Perry Oaks. Nearby lay The Magpies, a small settlement with a mission church and a pub called The Three Magpies. The area was mostly farmland with orchards and small cottages, worked by teams of labourers. The hamlet’s history goes back to a Neolithic settlement whose traces have been found in the gravel around the airport. In 1784 General William Roy chose an orchard at Kings Arbour as one end of the first precise baseline for measuring the distance between Paris and Greenwich observatories. The other end was at a poor house in Hampton, marked by rotting wooden pipes later replaced with cannon heads still visible today. By the early 20th century Heathrow remained a quiet agricultural place, with most residents working in market gardening. Today the old hamlet no longer exists, but its layout can still be traced on maps and in the landscape. The lane’s two bends and the sites of former farms and orchards remain recognisable near the airport’s perimeter. The mission church at The Magpies and the cannon-head markers from Roy’s survey survive as reminders of the area’s past. The parish church in Harmondsworth, with parts dating to 1067, continues to serve the surrounding villages. The old orchards and fields have given way to runways, yet the memory of Heathrow’s rural life endures in these scattered traces.