Editing Heathrow (hamlet) (section)

===Development===
Agriculture became the main source of income for residents in the hamlet, as the [[brickearth]] just as the underlying gravel in soils in the area made for reliable farming for fruit trees and bushes, vegetables, and flowers as it held manure well and markets were in easy reach of these perishable cash crops. Clay soil in other parts of England favoured potatoes and chalk favoured grains. Most residents and seasonal labourers joined in the large west Middlesex [[market gardening]] industry. Many residents grew which they would travel with into London to sell, on the return journey collecting manure for farming.<ref name="ps2009"/>{{rp|32}}<ref name="ps1993"/>{{rp|18}}<ref name=BBC/> As motor vehicles made urban horse manure (from stables and cleaned off roads) much less, local farm workers started instead using [[sewage sludge]] (up to {{convert|50|long ton/acre}} annually) from the [[Perry Oaks sewage works]], opened in 1936, as fertiliser.

The farms and buildings across most of south-east Harmondsworth greatly changed in the early 20th century; mostly a web of rural roads and lanes. An illustration being that until about 1930, only one building stood on the north side of Bath Road between Belches Row at The Magpies{{Refn|group=n|name=desc|The Magpies was a neighbourhood with its own Mission Church in Harmondsworth parish around the narrowed and closed-off lane once Heathrow Road, next to The Old Magpies (of the 16th century to 1950s) and the circa 18th century Three Magpies pub, both west of today's north exit of the Northern Perimeter Road}} on the two kilometres to the demolished Kings Head west of the preserved Longford Pump, [[Longford, London|Longford]].{{refn|group=n|The remote building was a small building and outbuilding, together part of Bath Road Farm; today by the modernist, tinted-glass office building Heathrow Boulevard where its large brick sign holder exists today}}  Three factories: [[Technicolor]] and [[Penguin Books]] and [[Black & Decker]] were founded in those fields before 1939.<ref>Sherwood, Philip 2012, p.77</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.hillingdon.gov.uk/media/pdf/j/3/Contaminated_Land_Strategy.pdf|title=Environmental Protection Unit Contaminated Land Inspection Strategy|website=Hillingdon.gov.uk|access-date=18 August 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120830022655/http://www.hillingdon.gov.uk/media/pdf/j/3/Contaminated_Land_Strategy.pdf|archive-date=30 August 2012|url-status=dead}}</ref> No buildings equally stood on the south side of this major thoroughfare.{{refn|group=n|Except Fairview Farm, Longford today the site of a large airport car park}}

Other than a few homes and gardens, six farms held land which became the airport in the 1930s, as documented in principal feature maps.<ref>{{cite web|last=Sherwood|first=Phillip|title=Heathrow – The Lost Hamlet|url=https://www.scribd.com/doc/57482167/Heathrow-The-Lost-Hamlet|via=Scribd|access-date=21 March 2012}} {{Dead link|date=June 2022}}</ref>

Heathrow was away from [[Trunk Road|main roads]] and further away from railways; that kept it secluded and quiet although near London. As Middlesex changed to [[market gardening]] and fruit growing to supply expanding London, parts of Heathrow held on to old-type [[mixed farming]], and thus was chosen for Middlesex area horse-drawn [[ploughing competition]]s, which needed land which was under [[Crop residue|stubble]] after harvest.

The ford where High Tree Lane crossed the [[Duke of Northumberland's River]] was a scenic spot used sometimes for [[picnic]]s and courting couples. There was a footpath along beside the river from the ford to [[Longford, London|Longford]].

The Middlesex Agricultural and Growers' Association held annual ploughing matches in Heathrow, until the last, the 99th, was held on 28 September 1937;<ref name="ps1993"/>{{rp|20}}<ref name="ps2009"/>{{rp|33}} the 100th match (in 1938) was postponed to 1939 due to severe drought, and in 1939 it was cancelled because [[World War II]] had started.

The Royal Commission on Historic Monuments listed 28 historically significant buildings in the parish of Harmondsworth, a third of which were in Heathrow.<ref name="ps1993"/>{{rp|33}} Notable buildings included Heathrow Hall, a late 18th-century farmhouse, which was on Heathrow Road,<ref name="Sherwood 2006, p.14">Sherwood 2006, p.14</ref> and Perry Oaks farm, which was [[Elizabethan era|Elizabethan]].

In the 19th century much brickearth-type land in west Middlesex, including in Heathrow, was used for [[orchard]]s of fruit trees, often several sorts mixed in one orchard. Much [[wikt:soft fruit|soft fruit]] was grown, often in the orchards under the fruit trees. Sometimes vegetables, or [[cut flowers|flowers for cutting]], were grown under the fruit trees. An author in 1907<ref>Stephen Springall, ''Country Rambles round [[Uxbridge]]'', 1907</ref> reported "thousands and thousands" of plum, cherry, apple, pear, and [[damson]] trees, and innumerable currant and gooseberry bushes, round [[Harmondsworth]] and [[Sipson]] and [[Harlington, London|Harlington]] and Heathrow.<ref name="ps2009"/>{{rp|31}} After World War I the amount of fruit growing in the area decreased due to competition from imports and demand for more market-gardening land, and by 1939 less than 10% of the orchard area was left.

[[File:Three Magpies, Sipson, TW6 (9465393203).jpg|thumb|The Three Magpies pub on Bath Road is the only surviving building of the former locality known as The Magpies.]]
Produce was taken to [[Covent Garden#Covent Garden market|Covent Garden market]], or by smaller growers to [[Brentford]] market, which was nearer but less profitable. From the Three Magpies, the lane's northern end – much reduced and curtailed today – to Covent Garden is {{convert|14|mi}} which was about 6 hours at laden horse-and-[[wagon]] speed; goods had to set off before 10&nbsp;pm the day before to reach the market when it opened at 4&nbsp;am,<ref name="ps2009"/>{{rp|33}} until motor trucks came. Lighter produce such as [[strawberries]] where freshness brought highest prices could reach Covent Garden Market in an hour and a half in a light vehicle behind a light fast horse.

An {{convert|11.93|acre|adj=on}} field south of the Bath Road, about {{convert|600|yd}} east of the lane, was, between 1912 and 1935, [[allotment garden]]s (shown on a map dated 1935) and in the 1940 [[Luftwaffe]] air survey.<ref name="ps2009"/>{{rp|14}}<ref>Old 1:2500 scale Ordnance Survey maps, reproduced at about 15 inches = 1 mile, publ. Alan Godfrey Maps:-	
* Heathrow, 1934, Middlesex sheet 19.08, {{ISBN|978-1-84784-112-4}}	
* Hatton, 1935, Middlesex sheet 20.05, {{ISBN|978-1-84784-279-4}}
* [[Sipson]], 1935, Middlesex sheet 19.04, {{ISBN|978-1-84784-120-9}}</ref>

In the 1930s Heathrow Hall and Perry Oaks were [[mixed farm]]s with wheat, cattle, sheep and pigs, and the other farms were largely [[market garden]]ing and fruit growing. Photographs from early in the 20th century show to the southeast, at Cain's Farm facing modest Heathrow House, milk cattle (about 22 in the photograph) and the yearly horse-drawn ploughing competition on Cain's Lane.  Later examples show such competitions in the far north-east near Tithe Barn Lane on Heathrow Hall land. In the 1910s a small gravel pit of just under an acre was on the east side of Tithe Barn Lane at the far west of what could be loosely, based mainly on Heathrow Hall's ownership be considered part of Heathrow and a similar marsh then pond to the north, all where today's Compass Centre stands.{{Refn|group=n|name=desc}}