How Close to London?

[PAXboy]

Thanks DaveRedidUK. My father worked at Fairey's as teenager in 1939/40, whilst waiting to sign up. My paternal grandfather flew from the airport many times in the 1930.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_West_Aerodrome

If you use a mapping or search site for The Green Man pub at TW14 0PZ, that places you in Faggs Road. Then take a 'birds eye' view of the area and you can see the buildings on the South Side of Faggs Road. Taking a closer look, it seems that Sky Chefs have moved since I was last on that road. Radius park is a light industrial park on the site.

[BEagle]

In the latest phase of its somewhat gypsy existence, the University of London Air Squadron now has to fly from that well-known aerodrome very close to London...

RAF Wittering.

Which would have meant a 90 mile drive from my old Halls of Residence! We thought that White Waltham was a bit of a trek, but Wittering??

[southender]

Was not Fairlop being considered as the main London airport before Heathrow won out?

[DaveReidUK]

Originally Posted by southender

Was not Fairlop being considered as the main London airport before Heathrow won out?

Yes, though Hansard refers to it as "an airport for London", not necessarily the main London airport.

LONDON AIRPORT (FAIRLOP). (Hansard, 2 February 1938)

[WHBM]

Originally Posted by southender

Was not Fairlop being considered as the main London airport before Heathrow won out?

I believe the actual ownership was to be the City of London Corporation. There doesn't seem to have been a central coordination of airports, investors were left to their own thing (sound familiar ?).

Meanwhile the Southern Railway got just a bit further with their own proposal for an airport at Lullingstone, near Swanley in Kent. The Southern Railway were one of the shareholders in Imperial Airways, who wanted to get away from the London Fogs which regularly disrupted Croydon airport at the time. Lullingstone is high up on the chalk hills plateau between Swanley and Sevenoaks, and relatively free from these. The M25 motorway between junctions 3 and 4 now passes through the site.

The railway actually got started and built the junction station for the short airport branch, none of which ever opened but parts of the station are still visible from a train between Swanley and Otford.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lullingstone_Airfield


Lullingstone