The odd shaped tarmac is indeed where the hanger was located, but the tarmac is the REMAINS of a playground that was erected after the hanger was demolished, but the climbing frame, swings and roundabouts were subsequently removed due to H&S:ugh::D

There's a new playground there now.... if you click on the
birds' eye (as opposed to map) view on that link you can see the new soft play site slightly to the west.

Ho hum....oh to have a deserted airfield to play in....

Thanks edskarf - you have no idea how many people I have asked over the years. Yours is the first confirmation of its identity.

Auster AOP9
 

Holyflyer - Glad I could help ... and to think I lived in Heston up to 1972. I must have left shortly before the Auster arrived. When I went to look for it at a later date I was looking in the wrong place - the TA site at the junction of Vicarage Farm Road and New Heston Road/North Hyde Lane!

You don't have or know of any photos of XN435 with the CCF do you?

Sadly no photos, but many memories of sitting in the cockpit as a teenager and dreaming .........

When i was twenty something and living in London I worked occasionally for a friend who had a service station at the Ace of Spades on the GW Road. That led to running one myself in Hanworth for a year (or maybe it was Hansworth, is there such a place?). Many years later looking at my mother's marriage certificate I noticed that her address was in Heston (She never mentioned living there.) She was marrying a test Pilot, Mike Graves, in 1946 and that may well have been the reason for the address. (The first address I remember was in Derby, as he later worked for Rolls Royce.)

Although I was keen on flying, and had already worked as a clerk at Westlands for a year (in Yeovil) I had no idea I was living and working amongst all that History. Now, of course, I am far too far away to enjoy more than armchair investigation and History presented on Pprune.

Heston
 

As a small child in the late 1950s, early 60s I occasionally wandered off with friends to play in the wild, overgrown, spaces of Heston Airfield. There were the remains of an elevated AA gun emplacement (on what seemed like a massive hill to me then but which was probably all of about 10 feet above the surrounding land) on the north side roughly where the western end of the Convent Way Estate is now. In those days access to the old airfield was through alleyways between the houses in Wentworth Road. Much of the area to the south east (about where Heston M4 Services now are) was given over to gravel extraction by the Ham River Gravel Co.

1945 Mustang that crashed after clipping the Grange Farmhouse
 

There is an interesting thread developing regarding the Mustang that crashed after clipping the Grange Farmhouse whilst trying to make an emergency landing at Heston in 1945.... see

http://forum.armyairforces.com/tm.aspx?m=137761

and

http://www.legionmagazine.com/en/ind...rom-the-crash/

Heston
 

Following those links the following website is a goldmine of information on Heston if you read on through it: http://www.commercemarketplace.com/h.../woodason.html

Four years on and the thread bubbles away!!

Many thanx for feedback chasps!!

I can feel another tour coming along -anyone interested???

Heston
 

Surprising (to me anyway) how many Heston fans there still are considering how long ago it closed and that it is, near enough, unrecognisable now. Too far for me to visit easily nowadays but this thread and http://www.pprune.org/aviation-histo...incidents.html have really stirred a long forgotten but latent interest for me. Great stuff.:)

Is it really 4 years? Doesn't seem like it!

Well Doc, I suppose the dogs must be walked somewhere - Hanworth / Hounslow / Heston is as good a place as any.

SD

If you know where to look on Hounslow Heath, you can still find, in the trees, part of the old fence that separated the public from the 'aircraft manoeuvring area'.

Really??

Where abouts? Can you post a Google Earth picture with an arrow or something?

I always thought that Hounslow Areodrome would make a good (if unusual ) subject for a Time Team Special!!

Once again good to see this thread continues to get some attention!!

Any new pictures or memories graetfully recieved (especially regarding the Gaston Riggs Mustang crash at Heston!!)

Keep 'em comming....

It is very interesting to learn that tangible evidence of the Hounslow iHeath aerodrome stills exists. I thought there was only the plaque on the Staines Road that commemorated the site.

Airfield Information Exchange - The Public Forums of The Airfield Research Group (ARG) • View topic - Hounslow Heath

And still it goes on!!

http://www.multimap.com/maps/?qs=hounslow+heath&countryCode=GB#map=51.46023,-0.38846|17|32&bd=useful_information&loc=GB:51.46037:-0.38846:17|hounslow%20heath|

CUT AND PASTE LINK -sorry, tried to embed it but failed!! :confused:

The concrete drive is visible in aerial pictures from the 1920's. The scrap yard to the left of the red ring is predominantly where the hangers were (in 1919). The rest of the hangers appear to be where the car park is now, on the north-east corner of the site.

Anybody up for another West London airfields revisited??? DOG.400 now joined by B1TCH.400.... ;)

Can but recommend:

'Coming in to Land' by Tim Sherwood.
A Short History of Hounslow, Hanworth and Heston Aerodromes 1911-1946.
Heritage Publications.
ISBN 1899144307. £11.99.
Avlble from Hounslow Library.

Regards
DOC

I've been following this thread for years. Anyone else interested in a tour now the summer is here ? Sounds good. Several of us PPRuNers did a comparable thing at Croydon last year (there's a thread about it somewhere here).

Having grown up in Bedfont, gone to senior school in Hounslow and spent many a spare summer day cycling around Hanworth Air Park I would be very interested is tagging along on a walk if one were to be arranged.

I remember the old hangers off of Browells lane which were occupied at the time by EMI, Once EMI moved out these hangers became an indoor go Kart track., from memory this track was quoted as being the biggest indoor track in the country, I used to be the postman to this track and due to the office being the opposite end from the hangar doors I used to drive the track in the Royal mail van :).and it was absolutly huge inside!!! Does anyone know if the trams and train stock were produced on this site? Sadly these hangers were demolished to make way for a cinema complex, though there is today some sort of statue on the former site.

Also, buried in amongst the trees on Hanworth airpark is a pillbox or similar, it is located in the far South East corner of the Air Park, looking at Google earth it is on the crossroads of the Hounslow rd and Uxbridge rd (where the Horse and Groom and Hanworth library are located) does anyone know in which era this was erected?

It was certainly somewhere round here. The rolling stock factory was known as "Feltham", and the owner was Union Construction Company, which was owned by and a front for the London Underground organisation, who were statutorily prevented from manufacturing themselves. The Feltham factory produced Underground train cars, trams (the "Feltham" type), and trolleybuses. It only operated in the 1920s and early 1930s. It wasn't connected to either Underground or tramway, and the output was all pulled out by steam traction engines on trailers. A bit like an aircraft factory without a runway, of which there have been a fair number as well.

Don't seem to remember any of the London Underground trains I travelled on as a youth bearing the Feltham name plate but do recall all the older former London Underground stock used on the Isle of Wight had the Feltham branding, so perhaps they were withdrwn from London before my time !