In its early years what is now Heathrow Airport was the Great West Aerodrome, sometimes known as Heathrow Aerodrome.
Before 1920
About 1410: The first known mention of a semi-rural lane called Heathrow (spelled La Hetherewe). Heathrow divided farmland and heath until 1819 when the heath also became farmland. Specifically, the lane divided the hamlet of Harmondsworth (on the northwestern edge of today's airport) from the 17th and 18th century highwayman's lair of Hounslow Heath (centred roughly where Terminal 3 is today). A little of Harlington, Hatton in Bedfont and Stanwell also fall within the airport's perimeter road. 1915: Fairey Aviation, founded by British aero-engineer and plane builder Charles Richard Fairey, started assembling and flight testing its aircraft from Northolt Aerodrome, about north of the modern Heathrow airport. 1917-1919: About southeast of Heathrow, Hounslow Heath Aerodrome was the only London aerodrome with customs facilities in 1919. After the closure of Hounslow Heath Aerodrome in 1919, Croydon Airport became the principal London Airport.
1920s 1925: Norman Macmillan, a Royal Air Force (RAF) officer, made a forced landing and take-off at Heathrow. He noted the flatness of the land and its suitability for an airfield. The land was at the time used for market gardening and wheat growing. 1928: The Air Ministry gave Fairey notice to cease using Northolt. Fairey Aviation needed an airfield for flight testing of aircraft designed and manufactured at its factory in North Hyde Road, Hayes. Norman Macmillan, by then Fairey's chief test pilot, remembered the forced landing and take-off at Heathrow in 1925, and recommended the suitability of the area for an aerodrome. Macmillan flew aerial surveys of the site. 1929: Fairey Aviation started by buying of farmland in four adjoining plots near southeast of the hamlet of Heathrow from four local landowners, for about £1,500, at the typical 1929 market rate of £10 per acre. (The first plot bought was from the Reverend R. Ross, vicar of Harmondsworth.) The site was bounded to the northeast by Cain's Lane, to the south by the Duke of Northumberland's River, and to the west by High Tree Lane. The airfield boundaries were south of the Bath Road (A4 road), northwest of the Great South West Road, and about two miles west of the western end of the Great West Road (A4 road). The airfield was about by road from the Hayes factory.Taylor (1997)
Areas of land bought at Heathrow, Harmondsworth, Middlesex by Fairey AviationAcres (ha) Date Purchased from Name of land 31 January 1929 Reverend R. Ross, vicar of Harmondsworth as trustee of parochial church council 12 February 1929 Reverend J. Taylor & others (ditto) 4 March 1929 Gamble's Farm (+ buildings) 16 April 1929 Official Trustees of Charity Land 16 June 1930 Lowe's Farm 5 January 1939 F. W. Longhurst 2 December 1942 1 November 1943 in total After this list was made, it bought a bit more land, the last in November 1943, extending the southwest border to the Duke of Northumberland's River.
1930s
June 1930: The airfield was declared operational. 1930 to 1939: The airfield was first called Harmondsworth Aerodrome, then the Great West Aerodrome, and sometimes Heathrow Aerodrome. One prewar map labels it "Airport". A hangar was built. Fairey planned to relocate its factory at Hayes to the site. The Great West Aerodrome was used for aircraft assembly and testing. Commercial traffic used Croydon Airport, which was London's main airport at the time. 1935 to 1939: The Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) held its annual garden party fly-ins at Heathrow airfield, at the invitation of Richard Fairey, chairman and managing director of the Fairey Aviation Company Ltd, and a past president of the RAeS. The events were aviation society gatherings combined with promotion and display of aircraft and their manufacturers, before the development of aircraft industry shows in Britain, from 1947. Richard Fairey, who started in business with model aircraft, also allowed weekend use of the airfield by model aircraft clubs. More people were said to visit Heathrow on that one day than they did for the rest of the year. 5 May 1935: The first Fairey's air show. A description in The Aeroplane magazine (8 May 1935) calls the place "Heathrow Aerodrome, Harmondsworth". 19 June 1936: A meeting of the Aerodromes Committee of Middlesex County Council, among other things, discussed and rejected an idea to have an aerodrome in the Heathrow area "at Harmondsworth near the Perry Oaks sludge works", with later extension by : reasons against were the presence of the Perry Oaks sewage sludge treatment works and of Fairey Aviation's aerodrome, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries objecting to loss of first-rate farmland: see Heathrow. 14 May 1939: The last Fairey's air show. Its brochure calls the place "Great West Aerodrome, near Hayes", and no mention of Heathrow.
1940s What became the airport was used by the RAF during the Second World War, but only for diversions. 1940: Hawker Hurricanes of No. 229 Squadron from RAF Northolt were sent to the Great West Aerodrome while there was a threat of enemy attack on Northolt. 1942: Richard Fairey was knighted as Sir Richard Fairey, and held the position of Director General of the British Air Mission, based primarily in Washington, D.C. 1943: Fairey Aviation bought 10 more acres () of land to add to the total of bought in 1929, 1930, 1939 and 1942. The company planned to move its factory from Hayes to the aerodrome at Heathrow. 1943: The Air Ministry, headed by the Secretary of State for Air (Sir Archibald Sinclair), secretly developed plans to requisition the airfield under wartime legislation – the Defence of the Realm Act 1914. The plans were stated to be designed to suit the considerable needs of long-range bombers, such as the Boeing B-29s of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), but they were actually based on recommendations from professor Patrick Abercrombie for a new international airport for London. The project was headed by Harold Balfour (then Under-Secretary of State for Air, later Lord Balfour of Inchrye), who kept the true nature of it hidden from Parliament. January 1944: The decision and plans were finally revealed. The wartime legislation provided no obligation to pay compensation; Fairey Aviation was offered compensation at the 1939 farming land market rate of £10 per acre; that was rejected. Sir Richard wrote to his co-chairman of Fairey Aviation:
The Air Ministry requisitioned the aerodrome, although the role that Fairey Aviation was fulfilling in the war effort meant the Ministry of Aircraft Production would only sanction the action if another site could be found for the test flights. Fairey moved to Heston Aerodrome, and stayed there until 1947, when it moved to White Waltham airfield in Berkshire. That proved especially inconvenient for the company, as the airfield was over from Hayes. As the aerodrome at Heathrow had been bought under the Defence of the Realm Act 1914, it meant the Government did not have to pay compensation when compulsorily acquiring land. Fairey sought compensation through legal proceedings that continued until 1964. Until their conclusion, the former Fairey hangar at Heathrow could not be demolished; afterwards it was used as Heathrow Airport's fire station. An attempt by the Air Ministry to take over the Perry Oaks sewage sludge works to fit in the top left corner of a ∇ layout of three runways caused furious exchanges with Middlesex County Council, who had to resist, as that would need first building somewhere else to treat the sewage sludge handled there, and building new connecting sewers, all in wartime. 12 February 1944: Winston Churchill objected to the usage of 3,000 men and much effort on the Heathrow project during the run-up to Operation Overlord. The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries objected to the loss of good farm and market garden land. April 1944: The Air Ministry requisitioned the airfield and surrounding farms, roads and houses, ostensibly to accommodate military bombers. (Harold Balfour (later Lord Balfour), then Under-Secretary of State for Air (1938–44), wrote in his 1973 autobiography, Wings over Westminster, that he deliberately deceived the government committee into believing a requisition was necessary so that Heathrow could be used as a base for long-range transport aircraft in support of the war with Japan. In reality, Balfour wrote that he always intended the site to be used for civil aviation, and used a wartime emergency requisition order to avoid a lengthy and costly public inquiry.) This took over all or part of twenty farmers' and market-gardeners' land-holdings, in total about initially. Construction of the new airport by Wimpey Construction began.Wimpey – The First 100 Years: page 28 May 1944: Eviction notices were issued. Airfield construction work began: demolition of Heathrow domestic and farm buildings, and grubbing out trees and hedges and fruit orchards.
After the Second World War
May 1945: When the Second World War ended, the new airfield was still under construction. Plans had changed from tenuous wartime military use to development into an international airport. A photograph made in 1945< shows the first ∇ layout of three runways, and a perimeter road smaller than the later airport boundary, and the former country lanes still existing, and Perry Oaks Farm and some buildings along Cain's Lane still standing among fields outside this perimeter. 1945: several bombers including Lancasters and Halifax were diverted there. No RAF aircraft became based there, although facilities common on RAF bases had been built. 1 January 1946: Ownership of the site was transferred from the (military) Air Ministry to the Ministry of Civil Aviation. Inaugural flight on Runway 1, recently completed; Runways 2 and 3 approaching completion. The airport buildings were Army marquees and caravans and prefabricated RAF huts. 10 January 1946: The British Cabinet agreed to Stage 3 of the airport, which was an extension north of the Bath Road, with a large triangle of three runways, obliterating Sipson and most of Harlington (Harlington church would have survived on a small spur of land with airport near on three sides), and diverting the Bath Road. 25 March 1946: Reginald Fletcher, 1st Baron Winster, the Minister of Aviation, performed the official opening ceremony. The first aircraft to use the new airport was a British South American Airways (BSAA) Avro Lancastrian named Star Light captained by BSAA's managing director AVM D. C. T. Bennett. The passenger terminal was an area of Army tents and duckboarding next to the south side of the Bath Road. Later the tents were replaced by prefabricated buildings. (It was opposite the Bricklayers Arms pub, which in 1954 was renamed the Air Hostess, and in 1988 was demolished.) The first control tower was a crude brick building (three storeys, plus two huts on its flat roof) roughly where the airport police station was later built. 16 April 1946: The first aircraft of a foreign airline, a Panair operated Lockheed 049 Constellation, landed after a flight from Rio de Janeiro. The first scheduled flight of the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) was an Avro Lancastrian headed for Australia on a route operated jointly with Qantas. 31 May 1946: The airport was fully opened for civilian use. The first passenger to alight was the war hero Charles Upham. 1947: By now Heathrow runways formed a triangle consisting of 100/280 ( long), 156/336 ( long), and 052/232 ( long). A parallel runway farther west soon replaced 156/336 thereby expanding the planned terminal area inside the triangle. The temporary "prefab" passenger and cargo buildings were at the northeast edge of the airport, just south of Bath Road. 1948: Perry Oaks farm was demolished.