heathrow before SIDs and STARs

[pax britanica]

Many years ago I assume that LHR operated without the SID STAR structure thate xistes today . But even though my memory of listening illegally to LHR Tower goes back to the days of lines of BEA Tridents waiting to depart , and thus the actual movement level was pretty high, I cannot remember anything before the Dover 1 Clacton 2 etc etc SIDS on airband but when younger still I remember LHR was till pretty busy with long lines of aircraft waiting to depart and . Some of the ones used have now crept up to much higher version number along with letter suffixes and some exotic ones have disappered completely .
So what happened before the SID appeared did pliots get their who;le airways clearnce read out to them?

Apologies if this has come up before but the downside of remembering the wonderful variety of aircraft at LHR in the sixties is that I cannot recall what I read six months ago!
PB

[LAS1997]

I seem to recall that Fairoaks was on one of the BEA LHR departure charts.

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

The outbound routes were laid down but clearances were issued verbatim rather than in an abbreviated form. Something like: "Crossed Burnham above 3000 ft, Beacon Hill at 4000 ft; climb when instructed by radar, etc, etc".