Heathrow before the Europa terminal and Queens building
 

I've been looking to get a sense of how Heathrow worked before the permanent structures (Europa and Queens buildings) were completed post-war. I've seen discussions on here about it's past, with pictures of the post war tents for example, and it's been very interesting. But I've gained little grasp on how it was organised and how it was experienced by passengers. Is there a good source I could turn to? Perhaps you have any experiences of visiting Heathrow before the proper terminals were built?

Thank you in advance

There are several good books on the history of Heathrow. For example:

"Heathrow - From Tents to Terminal 5" by Ian Anderson
"Heathrow - 2000 Years of History" by Philip Sherwood

Wikipedia also has a good history of the airport: History of Heathrow Airport - Wikipedia

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....98045041dc.jpg

Thank you kindly for that, I'll look into the books. And thank you for the picture as well, it's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for (among descriptions). Do you know when it's taken and what's showing? Passenger terminals?

For other curious about Heathrow I have found some old photos, but I'm not yet allowed to post links sadly.

Dave I assume that image is of Heathrow North which I think was at one time essentially The International Terminal. I don't know when it was closed but I remember quite by chance bumping into a pal from school there - that would have been roundabout 1960ish......?

Yes, I believe it was in use until the Oceanic Building (later T3) opened in 1961.

Northside was still in use as the 'Royal' apron until much later; I remember Air Force One parking and departing from there in 1970 when I was an assistant at the old LATCC Radar Unit.

In the early '50s we couldn't afford a car so day trips during the summer holidays by train or bus was the 'norm'.
We lived in Chesham, Bucks and at least once a year, our parents would take us to 'London Airport' by Greenline to Uxbridge then transferring to a red bus which stopped on the Bath Road near the terminal building.
I remember walking through the tents to access the public viewing area; initially (before the tunnel was built) all spectators were 'marshalled'; across the taxiway which was of course active at the time to an area between the central area still under construction and 28R (which was presumably not in use at that time due to the construction of the tunnel by the 'cut and cover' method involving the digging of a huge trench), where there were refreshment stands and joyrides in Dragon Rapides available. On one occasion, two RAF Meteors landed and they came and parked next to the joyriding aircraft; one single seat (presumably F8) and the other two seat (T7?).
This must have been about 1952 to about 1954, (I was born in 1948 so I was still very young) then when the tunnel opened, we would walk to the spectator area through this.
In 1956, London Transport ran Greenlines into the central area where the Queens Building and what was to become T2 were then open.

I've seen one picture of the interior, check-in desks. Would the North building have contained waiting areas and customs as well, or was that relegated to adjoining prefabs/Nissen huts/tents?

It baffles me slightly that Heathrow took so long to see any major improvements considering it was the first welcome to Britain for new travellers. But it's also charming in a way. Certainly would have given foreigners, like myself, a taste of the "make-do-and-mend" mentality that Britain is so famous for.

Thank you kindly for that information. I thought I had replied, but seems it got lost in the ether. Wonderful picture, would you happen to know when it was taken and what it's depicting? I see OUAQUKGF Ops mention Heathrow North which I'm sad to say I can't pinpoint in the clutter of small buildings.

I'll see if I can find those books as well, would you suggest any one over the other for someone on the hunt for a thorough description of the happening, amenities, and layout of the pre-1955 era?

A better view of the northside terminal:

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....80619d96b3.jpg

Charles Woodley also did a book on the early days of Heathrow Airport, I cannot comment on how it compares to the other titles mentioned though. A search on that South American river site shows various Heathrow related titles, such as this one.

1958/9 - I recall walking from the the BOAC Crew Reporting and Flight Operations office, known as Building 221, across the apron and on to the Stratocruisers, alongside Britannias, Connies, Argonauts and DC-7C's parked at the Northside terminal, also awaiting our passengers. This "apron" was parallel to the Slough (name?) Rd. near the subsequent entrance to the tunnel into the new Central Area, Queens Bldg, T.2 etc. BOAC crews subsequently parked at the BOAC building at Hatton Cross on the Staines Rd, officially named Tech. Block A, which housed aircraft hangar and maintenance facilities as well as being the Corporate headquarters, but called The Kremlin by most employees, and were then bussed to the Central Area Crew Reporting, Operations Centre in T.2 from where we would eventually walk out to our aircraft, before "Elf and Safety" got into the act. No yellow jackets in those days, commonsense prevailed. BOAC also built a training Empire at Cranebank, just up the road from Hatton Cross towards Hounslow.

Fond memories of it all.

?Bath Road?

I was based at LHR '89 onwards and am trying to visualise where the picture provided by the OP fits in with my much ore recent model of the airport..

With regard to the image in the OP - Am correct in thinking the minor road with a bend in it heading away from the viewer, centre view towards the top, is the Sipson Road, and if that's the case the Terminal being talked upthread was situated somewhere near the current Renaissance Hotel (I think that's what it's called this week)?

Wiggy, yes, Sipson Road.

Here's the site around 1960.

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoo...layers=193&b=1

Use the "change transparency" slider in the search box to see it today.

Excellent resource, thank you.

Here's another view:

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....5ec1aa9cd4.jpg

The northside terminal is/was directly behind the tail of the Stratocruiser.

Before my time, needless to say, but I can vaguely remember how the Northern Perimeter Road still used to kink around the rear of the buildings in the top left of the photo in the early 70s.

chevvron mentioned the marshalling kids across active runways. I might have a dark sense of humor, but it did make me wonder what percentage of kids returned in one piece was viewed as a successful outing!

On a side note, I must say that I've been on this forum a while as a passive observer, and your posts ExSp33db1rd are some of the ones that have been a special pleasure to read. Have you ever thought of writing a book?

I've got a special fondness for early post-war Britain over-all. And as an aviation nut these are the things that absolutely make my day. Thank you DaveReidUK. Looks like an Elizabethan down on the right of the picture too.

I've come roughly half-way through Robin Highams wonderful book "Speedbird: The Complete History of BOAC". But while it gives very detailed accounts of the management and political wrangling it doesn't, at least not so far, give more than exceptionally brief overviews of the experience of employees throughout BOAC and of the passengers that few with them. An extra human touch if you will. I do love the book however, and would recommend it to most anyone interested in the machinations behind one of the worlds most famous airlines.

Thats absolutely wonderful, thank you!

Bear in mind that Northolt had been used up until about 1950/51 for some flights and terminal facilities had to be built there too.

Note the 'original' control tower (later to become the airport police station) at centre.

It was adults too, not just kids, however I do wonder how many 'accident's' there actually were having almost been one myself.
I was walking back with my parents, my older brother and sister (both about 10 or 11 years old) were some way ahead. I saw them crossing the taxiway and ran ahead of my parents to follow them, only to be grabbed by a man in an 'airline' style uniform and pulled back out of the way of the DC4 (or it could have been a DC6; at the age of 4 my aircraft recognition abilities had not developed beyond the aircraft operating from RAF Bovingdon near where we lived) which I hadn't seen coming along the taxiway!
What would 'elf an' safety' have to say nowadays about pedestrians in such close proximity to spinning props?

It must have been great living relatively close by as a youth and interested in aircraft. Sadly I've never been close to an international airport other than when passing through. And I'm too young to have seen any of the props and early jets I find most appealing.

When you said Northolt was also in need of construction I'm not quite sure I follow. Wasn't Northolt only temporarily used for passenger services before the RAF took it back? I would have thought the focus would have stayed with London Airport (Heathrow) as prime concern over Northolt.

The only "developed" aerodrome in London, so far as I know, would have been Croydon. Which had actual arrivals and departure halls etc. So Heathrow, especially after being designated London Airport, should have seen rapid development. Though I'm sure the post-war era economy and several other more pressing concerns put it on the back burner for natural reasons.

What entrances would these be? International travel? Also wonderful photograph!

Gr
I grew up next door to LHR from the mid 50s, no doubt why I am on Pprune in the first place.
A few comments,
The road alongside the north side of LHR was the A4 Bath Road, a really major road back then-no M4 , the road along the eastern side was the A30 which goes all the way to Lands End . The roads joined/divided at a pub just to the North east of the airport called the Peggy Bedford, who Peggy Bedford was I have no idea. The dual carriageway onwards into London was called the Great West rd -A3. These roads are still there but are dotted with roundabouts and airport entrances and of course, are no longer trunk roads as such having been supplanted by the M4 and M3.

Northolt was I think still in BEA operation into the mid 1950s, one of my earlier memories was going to see where dad worked' at Northolt and climbing up the interior of a Dakota and Viking -ahhh tailwheels , or conventional undercarriage. This would have been 1955 because in mid 1955 I think BEA moved to LHR because we moved from Rickmansworth to Stanwell. Stanwell was almost still a very old and sleepy village (sadly it is a bit of a dump today) but the main element so f the old village are still there. I do not know how my father got from Rickmansworth to Northolt-no car, but although Stanwell literally adjoins LHR he worked in the central area and in the summer it was a push bike job until he got a car in about 1960. Stanwell was developing into something likre a northern company town' everyone except for a few elderly locals (who always called it Stannull) who worked at Heathrow. It still had a working blacksmith though and a high street with three pubs within 100 yeards.

The southern and especially S western side of the airport was virtually open countryside-security -whats that no fences, no guarded gates, cross the parallel rivers at the north end of the village and you were on the airport and occasionally people who had perhaps had a few too many in the Rising Sun Pub would get disoriented and wander too far onto the airport , no cargo centre then although the road bridge over the rivers had a security gate it was only to stop vehicles. Lots of rabbits foxes pheasants etc lived on the green 'meadows' that surrounded the few bits of concrete that came down to the SW corner

From 1955 on of course lHR grew and grew and grew, the central rea terminals T 3 or Oceanic being the last one, the extensions to the western end of both runways (known back then by their numbers as much as their orientation LHR of course had 6 originally but I can only ever remember seeing operations on five of them. The southern runway ( 10R 28L now ) was I think extended twice, firstly from block 79 to block 101 and then further west right to the western perimeter road.

Great views for my spotting days especially on a warm summers day with an easterly wind. On westerlies, things were not so good because there was no runway rotation and all landings were on the southern runway and all take offs (which seemed to comprise a pattern of -random aircraft -BEA Viscount random aircraft BEA viscount ad infinitum) were on the northern runway.

So excuse the memory dump but LHR was extremely interesting back then with all kinds of strange movements and a great variety of aircraft. It was also something of a social obstacle, the 'other side of the airport was long way away back in the 50s/60s not everyone had cars and the poor bus services meant there was nt a lot of interaction between the towns and villages, even two largely different spotting communities, the Cains Lane (now referred to as Myrtle Ave) group and the North LAP (as it was then) group.

Not always happy days but certainly happy memories and thanks for reviving them

I live just a few hundred yards south of the extended centreline and half a mile from the threshold of what would have been runway 30 at Croydon. Sadly it had already been closed for 11 years when I moved to Purley and 31 years when I bought the house I'm in now. Not that flying has been totally absent from the site in the time I've been here!

The tower stood roughly where the Customs House is today.

Higham's book is indeed a bit dense at times. Have you considered Graham Simons BOAC title? I see that Amazon doesn't stock it right now (you can get a glimpse of the contents though), but the publisher should be able to deliver a copy: https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/The-...rdback/p/15601

Yes,I found "Speedbird" a little disappointing.
It is an academic study using the minutes from board meetings.
The "Seven Skies" by John Pudney is an older book which is worth a read.

Pax B #25
 

Hi,

Not wishing to be (too) picky but wasn't the Peggy Bedford pub further along the A4 at the point which is now a Mackedees and the left hand fork in the road there takes you into Longford village and the western side if the airport.
There still is a great big pub (name escapes me) at the fork/junction of the A30/A4 but that's much further east - in fact about a mile west of what used to be known as Henleys Corner (IIRC).

Thinking of little security in those days,..My father and I went from Ashford Middx on pedal bikes in ~1954 and entered the airfield via the Beacon Road entrance just along from Stanwell village. (The big green flashing aierodrome beacon was situated there). There were Yorks parked nearby and we climbed into one. Bear in mind my father had no affiliation with the airport. Cop cars whizzed up with bells ringing, ran to the aircraft and asked what (the hell) we were doing. My father replied that it was my birthday and he was thinking of buying one of these fine aircraft as a present, ' Please close the door after you've finished then sir' was the reply.

Those were the days. S

The old tower ceased being the Police Station around 1969/70 when the new Police Station was built next to the tunnel ramp, diagonally opposite across the roundabout from where the customs house now is.
That 'new' Police itself has now been gone for 6 or 7 years now, which make you feel really old when you can remember a building being built and demolished within the space of only 40 years!!
My memories of the old zig-zagging peri road around the back of the old buildings from the tunnel up to the Arial Hotel junction is now very vague in the memory cells.....largely having spent a lot of time working at LHR in the early 80's and then the early 2000's and back again from 2015 to last year, so the old layouts get lost more easily in the memory, even the old central area road layout is only vague in the memory now and that's only been gone 10+ years.

That is/was the Travellers Friend - now also a McDonalds !

Leovinus - as to your question 'What Entrances....' The photograph depicts what these days is described as 'Airside'.

Probably !

Many of my previous colleagues have, I am currently composing an auto-bio for the grandchildren, and including Flying Stories, may expand it one day, but it would be a limited audience of course.

One of my ex-colleagues, ex-Manager, has recently published a book of "apparently" fictitious flying stories based on real events, e.g. he has changed names and locations to protect the innocent, not only of course to protect himself from litigation (!). He has included a couple of my tales. SKY TALK Vol 1 available now, SKY TALK Vol 2 awaiting publication PM Bergerie1 for details.

Feels a bit like I'm peddling books here... my apologies... but I too can recommend Sky Talk vol.1, see here: https://amzn.to/38ghgv4, also available from the publisher here: Sky Talk | Sunrise Publishing

And as I see it's also recommended by Mike Riley then I must definitely get me a copy!

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....e7a15c6560.jpg

Around 1950. I think.

What a lovely thread - Bring on the memory dumps please.

I was too little to recall Northside in operations.
Our first stints out to London Airport where in 1964 when Dad booked a holiday to the Costa Brava with Lunn Poly/Everyman Holidays who flew most of their package passengers on British Eagle Britannia's then from LON/LAP
(what was the 3 letter code>? I gather it was LON then)
We would have drives out to the airport on a Sunday afternoon 'to have a look' before we went on our Hols.
We used the British Eagle coach from their Knightsbridge air terminal in the end to join the flight at the Europa Building.

Re the Bath Road A4 - AFAIK it has always been the A4 (not the A3) right into Earls Court and beyond to Westminster & Holborn Circus.
Along the A4 was the Berkeley Arms Hotel in Cranford Hounslow opposite the Jolly Waggoner.
The Master Robert Hotel was further along towards Osterley.

The Three Magpies was formerly The Three Magpies Tavern. There has been a pub on this site since the 16th century and is the last pub left on the Bath Road.
Built 150 years ago, there is some interesting wood panelling. There was also the Old Magpies pub too.
All part of the Hamlet of Heathrow in the Harmondsworth Parish.

The lovely pub in Longford on the original Bath Road is the White Horse Inn.

(The avoiding Colnbrook by-pass was built early in the 1950's)

Back along the old Bath Road from the White Horse was the Peggy Bedford Hotel situated at 400 Bath Road. Previously known as The Kings Head, it closed in 1994 to make way for a McDonald's. The original Peggy Bedford, lived in a house known as The Stables in the village of Longford on the A4. It is believed that Peggy was the daughter of a landlord of the coaching inn then called the Kings Head and she ran the inn after her fathers death. In her honour the inn was renamed.


My pal Shirley who was Wafic Said's stewardess (Yes, Mrs Thatcher's pal) on his private BAC 1-11, then his 727 and she bought a lovely thatched cottage on the Island in Longford on the river there. Cute place which, if the 3rd runway build goes ahead will be all knocked down)

I'll have a look at it, certainly. And don't worry about peddling books! I've already ordered Heathrow - The first 25 years on your suggestion. I'm also trying to get my hands on a copy of David Beatys book "Story of Transatlantic Flight", but it seems to be out of print and unavailable in Sweden where I live. I'm really trying to get a better, more intimate, picture of what flying was like during the 1940-'60s. Who were these people? Why did they fly (both passengers and crew)? What did they experience both large and small? A quote from L.P. Hartley Is very apt in that "The past is a foreign country; They do things differently there". So all suggestions on the subject are definitely welcome. I've been too focused on the technical aspects of aircraft up until now. Flying needs a proper, human, context to go along with it.

I'll also look into the BOAC books being discussed. As luck would have it I find the denseness of Highams book quite welcome, though that's because it aligns with my interests rather well. And even I'll admit parts of it I don't read as thoroughly as the rest. I'll give your and renfrew s suggestions a look.

I don't know about limited audience. I think there are enough who would be interested, and with e-books being both easy to publish and purchase the spread would be wide. I'll have a look see if I can find Sky Talk!

Ah, thank you.

And to all of you who contribute with your memories, this is quite something. Thank you for sharing!

I'd like to contribute if I can. I found the following website brimming with photos of old Heathrow:

http://www.ukairfieldguide.net/airfields/Heathrow

And this very nice blog detailing some of its past and development:

http://exceptthekylesandwesternisles...1950s-60s.html