Heathrow Expansion: Eighty years of Bad Decisions

Heathrow destruction 1944

In 1939, at the beginning of WWII there were 351 people living in the hamlet of Heathrow. Some went off to serve in the Armed Forces, but the majority stayed to do their “bit” for the war effort by producing fruit and vegetables to sell at London’s Covent Garden market. For the patriotic farmers of Heathrow it came as a shock when on the 2 May 1944 a letter dropped through their letter boxes to say their land was being requisitioned and they had two months to pack up their homes, outbuildings, livestock, and, leaving their growing crops in the fields, find somewhere else to live.[1] The letter was from the Air Ministry and was in response to a decision made at the wartime coalition’s Cabinet meeting on 10 April 1944 when the Ministers had approved the “sterilisation” of the whole of Harmondsworth for the development of an airport.[2] However, just before D-day, with manpower and money in short supply, the Government could not afford to build more than three runways. The airport was to be built in stages. Stage one would be to requisition land south of the Bath Road (A4) which would completely remove Heathrow.

BAD DECISION NUMBER 1

The decision to fix Britain’s first international civil airport at Heathrow had first been muted by Lord Abercrombie who was commissioned to produce a Greater London Plan for post-war London. With the growth of air transport he knew that a civil airport would be needed after the war and he suggested ten possible sites around London. All of these existing airports were surrounded by housing estates and not expandable. The only leading contender was the Fairey Airfield at Heathrow, but there were many objections. Sir Richard Fairey did not want to give up his airfield. The Ministry of Agriculture did not want to bury the land, which, in Abercrombie’s plan, was described as “… a soil fit to be ranked with the world’s very best – a high-class market gardening and orchard soil, also growing fine grass and ordinary farm crops.”[3] It was not until just before D-day in 1944 that the Air Ministry began to construct the first stage by building three runways which would be completed by May 1946 at a cost of £3.8m. This stage would concrete over the grass Fairey airfield and all the Heathrow farms.

Stage 1 Airport Layout

Two years later on 10 January 1946, even before the airport was complete, Atlee’s post-war Cabinet meeting discussed a memorandum put forward by the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, Viscount Addison.[4] It proposed the establishment of Britain’s main international airport at Heathrow. He said the site of the airport was chosen after prolonged survey of the London area and it was considered to be the only suitable location. It will be necessary to acquire a large tract of land to the north of the Bath Road as well as a number of areas adjacent to the present site. The total cost of acquisition of 4,219 acres will be £7m. About 170 houses would have to be demolished in the area south of the Bath Road as well as a substantial proportion of the 1026 houses in the area north of this road. Also there would need to be “sterilisation” of further land on which building would be “controlled”. The airport was to be called “London Airport” and the name Heathrow discarded. Estimated total cost of the airport, including rail and road construction, was £30 million, but he was unable to estimate how much revenue the airport would generate. Bizarrely the Minister was also considering leasing some of the “sterilised” area of land, and even the land between the runways, to market gardeners. Obviously not considering what aircraft engine emissions would do to the crops or the environment. Estimated use of the airport when two runways were available would be 500 flights a day in normal weather. Total passengers per day would be 8500 of whom 1020 would travel in peak hour. The number of passenger movements per day for the extended airport was “guessed” at 12,000 to 15,000.

BAD DECISION NUMBER 2

During the Cabinet meeting the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton, accepted the need for an international airport at Heathrow but was concerned about the expenditure involved, and was not convinced that it was necessary at this stage to acquire land north of the Bath Road.[5] He strongly urged that the new enlarged scheme be postponed until 1950. Even though 2650 acres had already been destroyed and concreted, he proposed there should be a discussion about finding a new site for the airport where houses and valuable agricultural land would not be lost. The Minster of Town and Country Planning, Mr. F. Marshall, countered this by saying that all previous experience had shown the advisability of acquiring ample land in order to allow for unforeseen developments, and that unless the land was acquired now it was impossible to plan the development of the main roads in the neighbourhood. The Cabinet gave their approval for the development of the civil London Airport at Heathrow, which would be spread over the next eight years. [6]

Full airport plan proposed 1946

The civil airport opened in 1946. The original Fairey Hanger was used as a fire station, and ex-army tents were erected alongside the A4 as terminal buildings. The next phase of the development, which was to extend the existing runways, started in 1948 when more land to the south of the Bath Road was requisitioned. The Three Magpies public house on the Bath Road(A4) lost the remains of its six acres of land. The farms of the hamlet of Longford were requisition leaving so little agricultural land that farming was not viable. Only Perry Oaks sewage works remained. A further round of land requisition to the north of the Bath Road in 1960 for the building of a spur road from the M4 to the central airport buildings involved the demolition of the Old Magpies on the A4 and the removal of the farmland in Sipson. However as planes got bigger and passenger numbers increased there was still a need for a larger airport.

BAD DECISION NUMBER 3

The Roskill Commission was set up by the Government in 1968 to look into finding a site for a third London airport. London already had Heathrow and Gatwick and now there was a requirement for a four-runway airport. The Commission published its report in January 1971 and after initially considering 78 sites they recommended Cublington in Buckinghamshire as a suitable site. The Government rejected this suggestion and chose another site from the Commission’s short list which was Maplin Sands, Foulness Island, on the Thames Estuary. An Act of Parliament in 1973 paved the way for this development, but this was shelved after Labour came to power in July 1974. Instead a small-scale redevelopment of Stansted airport in Essex was agreed even though this was not a site short-listed by the Roskill Commission.[7]

BAD DECISION NUMBER 4

In 1991 the Transport Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, promised a wide public consultation on the building of a third runway at Heathrow.[8] It started a wave of protest from local councils in Middlesex and Buckinghamshire, and local residents. [9] At the same time there were also suggestions that a fifth terminal could be built on the land then occupied by the Perry Oaks sewage works. The Middlesex Council were not happy about the loss of the sewage facility, and concerns were expressed by the Buckinghamshire County Council (on whose border it stood) about the increased noise and pollution of planes flying over the county.[10] All protesters were relieved when in October 1993 Heathrow Airport Ltd community relations manager, Jon Philipps, said Heathrow had no plans for a third runway as building a fifth terminal did not require another runway.[11]

BAD DECISION NUMBER 5

However in March 1994 the Department of Transport was holding exhibitions and public meetings about the possibility of building a third runway for completion by 2010. They leafletted all the homes in Harmondsworth and held exhibitions and public meetings in Harlington, West Drayton, Sipson, Uxbridge, Stanwell and Harmondsworth.[12] The preliminary design for the expansion would have removed the hamlet of Sipson, on the north side of the A4, and most of Harmondsworth. However in April 1994 at a meeting of the Hillingdon Council, whilst the public enquiry was still in progress, a copy of a letter from Heathrow Airport Limited was circulated. It read, “I can state categorically that at no stage has either Heathrow Airport Limited, or its parent company BAA plc given evidence to the RUCATSE (Runway Capacity To serve the South East) inquiry indicating support for another runway at Heathrow. The airport needs extra terminal capacity rather than runway capacity.” This letter was signed by Jenny Bradley, director of public affairs at Heathrow Airport Limited.[13] It was not until November 2003 that the government announced that there would be no third runway in the “short term” because to do so would break European pollution laws.[14] However, despite all the public enquiries and the protests from local councils and other public bodies, the fifth terminal was built and opened in 2008 which resulted in a subsequent increase in the number of flights from Heathrow airport.

BAD DECISION NUMBER 6

In 2012 the UK Government established an independent Airports Commission to look again at the future of London’s airports. The 2015 final report of this Commission concluded that Heathrow Airport required a new northwest runway.[15] On 25 June 2018 the House of Commons voted to adopt this recommendation. This time the plan was to demolish the hamlet of Longford on the western edge of the airport, and to extend the runway over the M25 with the motorway disappearing into a tunnel. The Colne River would also be placed in an underground culvert. The hamlet of Sipson would survive but would be so close to the third runway that life in any of the houses would be unbearable. The timetable for the construction was to begin in 2021, when planning consent would be sought from the various local councils, and then construction would begin in 2023. Fate intervened with the schedule in the shape of the pandemic of 2020, when air travel was severely reduced and extra airport facilities were not needed. All talk of building a third runway was quietly dropped, but the residents of the parish of Harmondsworth and its hamlets of Sipson and Longford were left, once more, in limbo with the threat of demolition postponed but not removed. After a change of Government, in January 2025 the new Administration revised the prospect of a third runway and once more the protests began. Successive governments with their short-term thinking and procrastination have blighted Harmondsworth parish for eighty years. The constant threat of further airport expansion, the insecurity of tenure, and uncertainty for the future, has caused a slow decline in the number of long-standing families staying in the parish. Speculators have moved in to buy up property, letting them out on short-term leases, or turning them into houses of multiple occupancy. Some of the many ancient Grade II listed buildings have been left unoccupied and decaying. If the voice of the 1946 Minister of Town and Country Planning had been heard, and sufficient land purchased at the outset for future development of the airport, it might have avoided the prolonged indecision and decades of controversy. Meanwhile the residents of Longford, Sipson and Harmondsworth are in limbo. They have fought hard over decades to preserve their pretty villages that have survived since the Saxons built settlements there. These once peaceful rural agricultural villages with over twenty listed buildings are once again facing an uncertain future.

For the story of what will be lost under the Third Runway read:

‘Longford: A village in Limbo’ by Wendy Tibbitts.

[1] Sherwood, Philip. Heathrow: 2000 years of history, (Stroud, 1999)

[2] The National Archives CAB 66/48/39

[3] Stamp, L.Dudley, ‘Land Classification and Agriculture’, in Abercrombie (ed.), Greater London Plan 1944. (London, 1945),p.87

[4] The National Archives. CAB 129/6/4 5 January 1946

[5] National Archives CAB 128/5/4

[6] The National Archives' reference CAB 66/48/39 April 1944

[7] Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roskill_Commission#

[8] Middlesex Chronicle - Thursday 10 January 1991

[9] Harefield Gazette - Wednesday 25 March 1992

[10] Bucks Advertiser & Aylesbury News - Friday 15 June 2001

[11] Hayes & Harlington Gazette - Wednesday 20 October 1993

[12] Uxbridge & W. Drayton Gazette - Wednesday 16 March 1994

[13] Uxbridge & W. Drayton Gazette - Wednesday 27 April 1994

[14] Wolverhampton Express and Star - Saturday 29 November 2003

[15] Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airports_Commission

THE HIGHWAYMAN’S HIDEAWAY

The former Kings Head or Peggy Bedford 2006 © David Hawgood

Highwaymen were a public menace in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially on the vast open area of Hounslow Heath, on the western side of London. Hounslow Heath had to be crossed, with trepidation, by anyone travelling west from London on the Great Bath Road (now the A4) and thieves would lurk, inconspicuously, ready to stop the carriages of wealthy travellers and rob them of their valuables. Travellers breathed a sigh of relief when the carriages and stagecoaches reached the relative safety of the Kings Head in Longford village unscathed. At the Kings Head inn the passengers would enter the warm bar and enjoy refreshments whilst waiting for carriage or stagecoach horses to be changed for the onward journey. As they chatted to their fellow travellers they would not have noticed shadowy figures in dark corners listening to travellers’ tales and deciding who would be the next victim of the highwayman. There are many stories of highwaymen and their activities around the village, but Longford had one of its own. One night, just before Christmas 1769 a farmer left the Kings Head after an evening of heavy drinking. He walked to his nearby farmhouse, saddled his horse, put a kerchief round his face and ventured out on the Heath. With the bravado of a heavy dose of alcohol he held up a private carriage and with no more than a knobbly stick as a weapon he demanded money. The occupant of the carriage, who was prepared for a hold-up, shot and wounded the farmer who rode off. The man was found lying on the Bath Road a little further along from the incident and was taken back to the Kings Head. There his friends nursed him, but he died a few days later and is buried in the parish churchyard. The wealthy farmer was John Tillier, normally a respectable citizen, but his young wife had just died and with Christmas approaching he had let his melancholy make him reckless.

The Kings Head is now a Grade II listed Elizabethan building, on the western edge of London Airport  and only 450 meters from the northern runway. It is a shadow of the former coaching inn that was well-known throughout the country.   The walls of the building can just be glimpsed through the tall trees and overgrown garden on the opposite side of the Old Bath Road from the Littlebrook Nursery. The gates are now closed with concrete blocks and its ancient windows are boarded up. It is a forlorn sight for an inn once visited by Monarchs and nobility, but also the haunt of highwaymen and scoundrels. The Kings Head has many tales to tell, but it did not always look like it does today.  When Queen Anne visited Bath to take the medicinal waters she made Bath a fashionable place for high society to visit. The Bath Road became busy and The Kings Head needed more room. At the end of the eighteenth century the inn was extended out to the road side. It added a 60-horse stable, spacious bar, more accommodation for travellers, and a large ornate reception room known as the Queen Anne Room. This room had a large fireplace with china cabinets in each recess and comfortable furniture fit for Royalty. Unfortunately Queen Anne never saw the inside of the room built for her comfort because by the time she was travelling to Bath to take the waters she was overweight and suffering from gout which made walking difficult. She would stay in the carriage whilst the horses were changed. However many other Kings and Queens did make use of the inn’s hospitality, especially Queen Victoria who in January 1842, famously handed the baby Edward VII to the landlady to hold whilst she drank her tea.

The landlord of the Kings Head in the late eighteenth century was John Bedford. He was a widower when he married local girl Mary Dean in 1778. When he died in 1794, aged 54, his widow, Mary, took over the running of the business with the help of her two eldest children, Joseph and Peggy aged 14 and 13. There were also three younger children. Joseph and Peggy inherited the pub when their mother died in 1807 and then Joseph also died leaving Peggy Bedford to continue as landlady for a total of fifty years. She made the pub famous nationally and it was always referred to as Peggy Bedford’s. She never married, but there were rumours of her being the mistress of a highwayman. Her death in 1859 was reported in newspapers all over the country. Over the centuries many fascinating events occured at the inn, from deaths and scandals, to public meetings, annual dinners, and inquests all of which have been told in the book, “Longford: A Village in Limbo”. In the early twentieth century the pub was a destination for cycling clubs and beanfeast outings. The four-acre kitchen garden was turned into an ornamental garden with a pond, a bowling green and a summer house. An enterprising landlord converted the stables (which are also listed and ‘at risk’) into a training gym for boxers and some of the leading British boxing champions of the day trained there before a major fight.

The Queen Anne extension and the first motor bus through Longford 1920. The number 81 still runs the same route through Longford from Hounslow to Slough today.

In 1928 the Colnbrook bypass was built through the Peggy Bedford’s gardens and the bypass cut the pub off from passing trade. The pub surrendered its licence and a new Peggy Bedford was built on the apex of the old and new roads. The original pub became residential, but in 1934 there was a serious fire that caused the roof to fall in and destroyed the eighteenth century part of the house. However the older part was saved as were two great elm trees which stood in front of the pub. They were said to have been planted by Queen Elizabeth I (although this is unlikely). One was hollow with age and people threw coins in it for luck. The fire was reported in newspapers all around the country. The older house continued as a dwelling.  In 1944 large parts of the farmland around Longford were requisitioned by the Air Ministry to build a airfield with a concrete runway which obliterated the hamlet of Heathrow and Perry Oaks farm. The first Commandant of the Civil Airport, which opened in 1946, was Air Marshall Sir John D’Albiac.[1] He and his family moved into a house they called The Stables which was in fact the now Grade II listed remains of the original Peggy Bedford. They lived there from 1947 until at least 1955. It was under his command that the airport developed the two east/west parallel runways rather than the triangular runway system originally built.[2]

Since 2018 the expansion plans for the airport included the demolition of the whole of the village of Longford. While the future of Longford is unknown the village is blighted and no one will want to live in this wonderful old building. The Old Peggy Bedford will remain on Historic England’s At Risk register.  It is a sad fate for such a distinguished building.

[1] For a Ministry of Information Film about the building of the airport see https://archive.org/details/london_airport_TNA/london_airport_TNA.mpg

[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/programmes/the_day_britain_stopped/timelines/heathrow/html/1940s.stm

The boarded up remains of the Tudor building 2018. Now on Historic England’s At Risk register

For more historical stories about Longford, Heathrow and Harmondsworth in West Middlesex read:

“Longford: A Village in Limbo” by Wendy Tibbitts.

 

Tales from Longford:  The Bath Road milestones

 

Few of us, as we drive along the A4 on the northern edge of Heathrow airport, realise we are travelling on an old coaching route called The Great Bath Road. Nor can we now imagine how it felt for the eighteenth-century travellers in their coaches and carriages, bumping along the hardened earth road, stopping every seven miles to change horses, eat and drink, and enduring that for the three-day journey to Bath. Whilst most people have forgotten the history of the Bath Road there are still reminders of the old days which lie unnoticed against a fence or a wall on the airport side of the road.

The road was a busy coaching route between London and Bath where fashionable gentry would take the medicinal waters. After leaving Hounslow the road crossed part of the isolated Hounslow Heath which brought with it the additional fear of being robbed by highwaymen, but it did not deter passengers from making the journey. The carriages would stop to change horses at the many inns along the route, and passengers would have time to refresh themselves at the Three Magpies at Sipson Green, or the four inns in Longford. For the passengers, the coach journey along the Bath Road, was not a comfortable ride. The packed earth surface was sometimes reinforced with gravel dug from the nearby fields, but this did not prevent it from becoming a constant source of complaint. The vehicle wheels damaged the surface, and dry hot weather baked the mud into deep ruts, which in wet weather would fill with water and produce cloying mud. The solution was to impose a proper maintenance plan on the road. On 1 June 1727 thirty-two trustees met at the George Inn, Colnbrook, for the first meeting of the Colnbrook Turnpike Trust. This trust was formed to maintain the Bath Road, for a length of seven miles, between Cranford Bridge and Maidenhead Bridge. The cost of the road maintenance would come from tolls paid by the highway users. The improved road surface, strengthened by a proper gravel surface and improved drainage, meant the journey-time to Bath could be shortened to less than a day, but there was still room for improvement.

In 1741 the Colnbrook Trust erected mile stones along the seven miles of Bath Road under their administration. The stones were commissioned from Mr Woodruff of Windsor and cost £2 8s each. Although recut in the 1820s the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth miles stones are still in place today. They show the distance between local towns as well as the total distance from Hyde Park Corner.

 

One of the natural hazards in the summer for the Bath Road travellers was the choking dust created by the wheels of the carriages breaking up the dried mud on the road. In 1827 the Colnbrook Turnpike Trust spent £759 on trying to solve this problem. They had wells dug every two miles, installed pumps and bought new water carts. The pumps were made by Fowler & Co of Lambeth and were about two metres high in order to be tall enough to fill a barrel mounted on a cart. The water carts would then be used to spray water on the road in order to lay the dust. From March to October the road would be watered twice daily in dry weather, except for Sundays. This practice continued into the twentieth century until just before the first World War when the road surface was sprayed with tar. One of these pumps has been preserved, today, at Longford near the 15th milestone.

 

Today we hardly notice the milestones which still mark the miles from London as they have done for 283 years, but they are still there and still standing smartly to attention to fulfil their purpose. The thirteenth-mile marker is outside the telephone exchange at Harlington Corner and opposite the Best Western Arial hotel and the Airport Bowl.  The fourteenth is just past the Three Magpies pub, near Newport Road that leads onto the Northern Perimeter Road West, and opposite the Leonardo Hotel. The fifteen-mile marker is against a car park fence and opposite a petrol filling station and a MacDonalds where the Peggy Bedford pub used to be. This and the sixteenth marker, close to the bridge that carries the Old Bath Road over the M25 near Colnbrook, will be removed if Longford village is demolished to make way for the Third Runway, and another piece of Longford history will disappear.

Read more about the last three hundred years of Longford in:

 "Longford: A Village in Limbo" by Wendy Tibbitts

For a “Look Inside” option for this book go to 

  https://b2l.bz/WUf9dc

Murder at the Colnbrook Tollhouse

 

Colnbrook Tollhouse 1933

Murder at the Colnbrook Tollhouse

When Bath became a fashionable place for Society to visit, the Great Bath Road (A4), which passed through Hounslow Heath to Longford and Colnbrook and onwards to Bath, saw an increase in the long-distance carriage trade. The constant movement of carriage-wheels damaged the compressed earth road and often resulted in a quagmire of deep mud through which pedestrians, riders and coaches had to pass. When the mud dried out the crushed mud then covered travellers in clouds of dust.

Local people would sometimes spread gravel on the road to improve the surface, but it soon became clear a proper maintenance policy was needed. Turnpike Trusts were formed on all major roads. They would charge users a toll to travel along the roads and this money paid for the cost of road maintenance. Gates were set up across the road where the toll was to be collected and toll houses built for the toll-house keeper and his family to live in.

The Colnbrook Turnpike Trust was set up in 1727 to maintain a length of road from Cranford Bridge to Maidenhead Bridge. A turnpike gate was built at Salt Hill in Slough, but the main gate was west of Colnbrook. This gate was later thought to be inconvenient and collected insufficient funds, so in 1739 it was moved to the eastern side of Colnbrook near the road to Poyle and a tollhouse built alongside it.[1] Two toll gatherers were employed to collect the tolls. The tollhouse was often isolated and vulnerable to thieves who knew that sums of money were held there.

On 16 June 1735 the Colnbrook Toll keeper was robbed of all the previous days takings.[2] In April 1768 the tollhouse keeper, Benjamin Harvey was robbed of not only his takings, but his silver watch and eight shillings and ninepence of his own money. The Colnbrook Turnpike Trust refunded him £2.18s.3d for his loss.

Joseph Pierce from Langley Marish had married his London-born sweetheart in 1764 when he was 26. Later Joseph became the tollhouse keeper and moved his growing family into the tollhouse at Colnbrook. On the night of 23 February 1781 he heard a noise in the tollbooth and went to investigate. At two in the morning a butcher from Windsor, with another traveller, entered the tollhouse to pay their turnpike toll and found the keeper badly injured on the floor, covered in blood, and dying. His head appeared to have been caved in from the use of a blood-covered poker that lay nearby and there was a large pool of blood around his body. It was later found that twelve pounds had been stolen.[3] Joseph Pierce did not survive the night. He was 43 and left his wife with a teenage daughter and three young children. The family lost their home and their wage-earner on that terrible night.

 

The murder shocked the nation and the hunt was on for the killer. In March a man was arrested in London and confessed to the murder and robbery at Colnbrook turnpike, but appeared to be “disordered in his senses” and it was discovered that he had arrived from India since the murder and robbery were committed.[4]

It was not until three years later that the culprit was discovered by chance. In April 1784 a man called Robert Griffith was employed by Samuel Dixon who lived in the 16th century Wallingtons Manor, a large manor house in the village of Kintbury, Berkshire. On the night of 7 April Samuel Dixon was staying in London when the manor house was badly damaged by fire. Robert Griffith was sent to London to tell Mr Dixon about the fire, but his suspicious behaviour caused Dixon to question Griffith about the fire. He eventually confessed that he started the fire to cover up the fact that he had stolen a brace of pistols, a gun, and a quantity of money.

Whilst in custody he also confessed to the murder of the Colnbrook Tollhouse keeper. At the time of the murder Griffith had been the second toll-gatherer at Colnbrook and it was thought Joseph Pierce had surprised him whilst he was stealing the takings. Griffith was sent to Reading Goal where he tried to slit his own throat, but he missed his windpipe and, after the cut was sewn up, he survived.[5] His sentence is unrecorded, but the crime would have been classed as highway robbery for which a death sentence is mandatory.

The tollhouse was demolished in 1962. There is a rumour that it was haunted by the ghost of Joseph Pierce, and that his spirit is said to walk at Halloween.

For more historical stories about Colnbrook, Longford, and Harmondsworth read “Longford: A Village in Limbo” by Wendy Tibbitts.

[1] Rosevear, Alan. A booklet on the Turnpike Road around Reading. http://www.turnpikes.org.uk/Reading%20turnpike%20roads.htm

[2] Newcastle Courant - Saturday 21 June 1735

[3] Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette - Thursday 01 March 1781

[4][4] Reading Mercury - Monday 19 March 1781

[5] Northampton Mercury - Monday 26 April 1784

Tales from Longford: The King's Secret Island

The Island House, Longford, by Archibald Robertson 1792.

There is a four-acre inhabited island at Longford, Middlesex, little known to outsiders.  The residents of the island would like to keep it that way. It is a peaceful haven surrounded by the River Colne in an unexpectedly tranquil setting considering its location in between the M4, the M25 and London’s Heathrow airport.

Ancient folk knew the advantage of making settlements near water. The water was needed for drinking, washing, crop irrigation and cattle rearing. The banks of the River Colne in Middlesex attracted the Saxon invaders who began to settle in clearings they made in the Middlesex Forest and gave the settlements appropriate names.[1]  Longford is part of the parish of Harmondsworth which belonged to Harold Godwinson the last crowned Saxon King who died at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. William the Conqueror then gave the parish to Abbey of Holy Trinity, Rouen, before it passed to the Bishop of Winchester, and was acquired by King Henry VIII in 1543.[2] The King assigned the parish to a nobleman, but kept ownership of the island at Longford and it remained Crown property until 1874.

There was a mill on the island at Longford mentioned in the Domesday book of 1086. At various times it was repaired or replaced and the waterpower was used for a variety of commodities.  Sometime before 1745 a substantial house, known as Island House, was built on the tip of the island nearest the bridge that led to the Bath Road. The site is now an apartment block. As well as the mill and its outbuildings there were two acres of meadow land, and footbridges led to smaller islands. The strip of land running along the opposite bank of the river, with its fishing rights, was also the King’s property.

Island House was one of the largest buildings in Longford.  It was leased to various London gentry who used it as their country abode, and the meadow and mill were often leased separately.  In 1747 when there were 16 taxpayers in Longford, Mr Hurst was paying nineteen shillings and sixpence in land tax for the island.  By 1767, when George III was on the throne, there were 25 tax-paying households in Longford, and a Mr Burnet was paying taxes on Island House.  George III’s long reign was marked by continual global conflicts and more taxes were needed in order to raise money to fight these wars. In 1770 a window tax was imposed on the residents. From the returns for Longford we can see that the two largest buildings in Longford were the Tudor-built ‘Yeomans’,  and Island House.[3]  Both had 19 windows and were paying £1.11s.6d in tax.  By 1772 Thomas Willing was the occupant at Island House and paying the same amount of tax as his predecessor.

Thomas Willing was a Quaker businessman from London, originally from Bristol, whose brother was Mayor of Philadelphia, and whose nephew was later involved in the formation of the American Independence movement.[4]  Thomas Willing died at Island House in 1773 and was buried in the chancel of St. Mary’s, Harmondsworth.  In his will he left the lease of Island House  to his niece, Dorothy Stirling whose husband was Admiral Sir Walter Stirling. Dorothy brought up her three children at Island House while her husband was away at sea, but by 1782 with her children all grown up she journeyed to Scotland to visit her married daughter. There she became ill and died aged 42. Her husband lived another four years and on his death his body was brought back to Harmondsworth to be buried in the church.

Dorothy had left the lease of Island House to her eldest son, Sir Walter Stirling, who was a banker in the City of London. His bank was doing well and he married an heiress from Kent. He also became an MP, a fellow of the Royal Society, and a High Sheriff of Kent. He and his wife, Susanna had a son and four daughters, but shortly after giving birth to her last daughter, Mother and daughter died. Both were buried in one coffin in St Mary’s church, Harmondsworth.  More bad news was on the way for Sir Walter. There was  a banking crisis in 1825 which resulted in a run on the banks and small bank’s like Sir Walters were unable to pay their depositors. The bank collapsed owing thousands to their customers. Sir Walter had to sell all his assets including his property in Kent and Middlesex. It took him two years, but he did eventually manage to pay all his debts and restore his reputation. When he died in 1832 aged 74 he was brought back to Harmondsworth and laid to rest at St Mary’s.  In 1833, his brother, Charles, who was an Admiral like his father, died and was brought back to Harmondsworth to be buried next to his wife. This ended the 60-year association the Willing/ Stirling family had with Harmondsworth.

In April 1788 plans were put forward for a new mill to be built on the Island on the tributary nearest the village.[5] This replaced the paper mill which had ceased running eighty years earlier. It is now the site of Colne Cottage. The new water Mill with its spacious yard and a range of workshops and buildings was leased to a series of calico printers by George III's Crown estates.

In 1791 it was Robert Buchanan who was insuring he premises, [6] and in 1799 the tenants were Edmund Hill and John Thackrah we were paying rent of £17.7s.6d per annum.[7] Thackrah and Hill renewed the lease in 1806 for 41 years. Island House and two acres of meadow were leased to a member of the Jarvis family. The Jarvis family were a long-term dynastic Baptist family that had lived in Longford for centuries. Thomas Jarvis was occupying the Island House when he died in 1823. He and his wife did not have children, but he amassed a fortune as a property auctioneer in the late 18^th century and when he died his bequests changed the fortunes of most of his nieces and nephews. He left land to two of his nephews, Thomas and William, and his bequest virtually doubled their landholdings. The condition of the bequests were that their mother, who was already living in Island House, would remain there for her lifetime and the two brothers would support her. In his will he rather pointedly left them the land and stipulated that they should carry on the farming business as tenants in common, “without any difficulties” implying that the brothers had had “difficulties” in the past and he was hoping to restore peaceful relations between them.

The leaseholders of the mill, Hill and Thackrah,  sublet the house and business in 1833 when the sale of the lease was advertised as being sold “without reserve”. The house and its garden, together with a length of the opposite bank of the Colne, which had fishing rights, was sold to John Batchelor.  Andrew Inight bought the lease to the Mill and its own patented machinery for printing of calico and other fabrics on a flat bed press, plus other presses, boilers, stoves, winches, and other equipment.[8]  These two purchasers either did not know that the properties were leasehold, or hoped that if they kept quiet long enough the freehold would revert to them, but the Crown caught up with them.

On 13th May 1850 the pair’s solicitor was in court to defend an action brought by the Attorney General over who actually owned the island.  Their defence was that they did not recognise the  Crown as owners of the island and claimed that as they had not been paying “rent or profits” to the Crown for 20 years the island had reverted to their ownership.  However the Receiver General for the Crown produced receipts that showed the rent had been paid annually in the name of the original leasees until the expiration of the lease in October 1847 when the payments ceased.  After hearing all the evidence the Judge ruled in favour of the Crown and the defendants were evicted from the disputed land and premises.[9]

By 1874, with Queen Victoria on the throne, the Crown were selling the Freehold of the whole island and all the buildings on it. It included a separate island and a thin strip of land along the opposite river bank plus all the buildings.[10]

There is no mention of a mill in the sale details, but there are two meadows each of over an acre in land and a kitchen garden with fruit trees, where violets were being grown for sale. The main Island House is described as “Old-Fashioned” and there is a stable for two horses, a coach house, cottage, wash-house  and baking oven. The occupier was James William Jarvis, Market Gardener, a yearly tenant who was under notice to quite at Michaelmas 1874. At the auction the whole island was bought for £750 by George Shuter, of London, a potato salesman.  His Company, George Shuter Ltd, was a very successful Potato Sales business which was still trading at Covent Garden in 1971.

George Shuter also happened to be married to James William Jarvis’s eldest daughter and he had bought it so that his father-in-law could continue his tenancy. However, the 1870s was a bad time for British agriculture when there was a collapse in grain prices. Jarvis was struggling. By 1880 he was in the bankruptcy court.[11] He continued to live in Longford, but to make ends meet he became a travelling salesman before eventually moving to Park Lane, Hayes, where he died in 1894.

In 1892 the freehold of the Island was once more up for sale by auction, but failed to sell. It was then sold by private treaty. The Island passed through several more owners and in 1897 was put up for auction by Mr J.T. Lane who advertised the remodelled family home as a ‘Summer residence’ or ‘Hunting Box’.[12] A London businessman, Thomas Fuller Toovey, bought it as a home for his retirement. Although only 40 he had made his money designing and manufacturing bicycles. He moved into his house on 30 June 1898. He had paid £1080 for it and spent another £800 in alterations.[13] He and his wife lived there most summers, but they would let it fully furnished for three months or more each October.  By November 1905 Toovey was selling the entire contents of the house and outbuildings, which included a 8hp Peugeot motor car and a 2¾ hp motor bicycle, as he was “going abroad”, although he retained the freehold.[14] From December 1905 Joseph Perrin, a button merchant had a seven-year lease on Island House. The Perrin family attended Poyle Congregational church where their son Edward was Secretary for the newly formed Poyle and Colnbrook Congregational Institute.

It appears that Joseph Perrin did not renew his lease because by February 1913 the house had been redecorated and was available for rent.  In October 1914 Mr Pagesmith was given a seven-year lease on Island House at £120 p.a.  There was a dispute however in August 1915 between owner and tenant over some tools and equipment on the property that Pagesmith had agreed to purchase from T.F. Toovey. The payment was not made and Toovey took Pagesmith to Uxbridge County Court before successfully getting his payment.

Mrs Pagesmith was a member of the Harmondsworth Women’s Institute. In August 1923 she hosted a summer garden party for all its member in the “old-world” garden of Island House. There was a jazz band, punting, games and refreshments. The party ended at 10pm with fireworks.[15] The family were still there in 1926 when Mrs Pagesmith was advertising for a house-keeper. By 1939 Frank Pagesmith was dead but his wife and son, Gordon, were still living in Island House.  Gordon had been a City of London rubber broker, but in 1930 had been declared bankrupt and was forbidden to deal after some of his speculations left a £56,000 deficit. By 1939 he was calling himself an “Estate Manager”. Another son, Norman was a Music Hall entertainer and the third son, Saxon, had the Fairfax plant nursery in Hounslow. Gordon and his mother breached the blackout regulations in 1941 and were fined 20 shillings. They continued to live at Island House until 1948 when Blanche Pagesmith died aged 84. Gordon moved to Staines and died there in 1957.[16]

By the time the  1939 register was drawn up there are several other residences on the Island. In Island Cottage lived Mr and Mrs Howard. Colne Cottage housed Mr and Mrs Begg. The Rees lived at Banco, and there were two other houses: Watersmeet, and Riverside.

The island has continued to be a delightful, hidden, part of residential Longford. Now the island is under threat from the proposed Heathrow Airport Expansion.  If the third runway is built the island will disappear, the buildings will be demolished and the tranquil river Colne, which has given sustenance and industry to Longford for centuries, will disappear into an underground culvert. We must treasure the island and its history while we can.

 The river Colne 2018

For more on the history of Longford read “Longford: A Village in Limbo” by Wendy Tibbitts

For a “Look Inside” option go to  https://b2l.bz/WUf9dc   or scan the QR code:

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[1] Bate, G.E. And So Make a City Here, (Hounslow, 1948)

[2] Impey, Edward, The Great Barn of 1425-27 at Harmondsworth, Middlesex. (Swindon, 2017)

[3] London Metropolitan Archives, LMA/4067/A/03/005

[4] Tibbitts, Wendy, Longford: A Village in Limbo, (Dorset, 2022)

[5] The National Archives, MPI 653, part 2, DSCF7826.jpg

[6] London Metropolitan Archives MS 11936/378/588220

[7] The National Archives E 367/6134

[8] Windsor and Eton Express - Saturday 26 January 1833

[9] London Daily News - Tuesday 14 May 1850]

[10] The National Archives, MPI 653, part 1

[11] https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/24902/page/5775/data.pdf

[12] Middlesex County Times - Saturday 08 May 1897

[13] 1910 Valuation Survey Field Book. TNA IR 58/39632

[14] West Middlesex Gazette - Saturday 25 November 1905

[15] Uxbridge & W. Drayton Gazette - Friday 10 August 1923

[16] Uxbridge & W. Drayton Gazette - Friday 14 March 1941

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