[OTish] London: A Life In Maps - with a question about Abercrombie'seastern airport
 

Evening all,

There's an exhibition of maps of London (and related things) spanning
getting on for 2000 years on at the British Library:

http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/featu.../homepage.html

I went today - i thought it was excellent. Looking at a detailed,
colourful and entirely familiar-looking picture of the Thames that was
drawn five centuries before i was born sent shivers down my spine, and i
was struck by the way that over the whole course of the history of London,
Tower Hamlets has remained the poor part of town; from the Roman retreat
to the present day, the city expanded over dozens of square miles to the
west, but the East End has remained much the same.

There's a take-home CD with a Google Maps-based historical map overlay,
but you can also get that he

http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/featu...downloads.html

I'll have to wait for Google Earth to be backported to MacOS X 10.3 before
i can use it, though 8(. Oh, hang on, it has been. Hurrah!

ObTransport: there's a lot about roads, and few maps about railways,
although surprisingly little about the tube. Plenty on the river, though!

Also, there's a copy of a map from the 1944 Abercrombie London masterplan,
mostly detailing the layout of the green belt, but it shows the locations
of airports. I recognised Heathrow, Northolt (i think) and the one down
near Croydon, but there was also one shown to the east, within the M25,
north of the river (i think - i didn't make an exact note). Any idea what
that might be?

tom

--
Formal logical proofs, and therefore programs - formal logical proofs
that particular computations are possible, expressed in a formal system
called a programming language - are utterly meaningless. To write a
computer program you have to come to terms with this, to accept that
whatever you might want the program to mean, the machine will blindly
follow its meaningless rules and come to some meaningless conclusion. --
Dehnadi and Bornat

[OTish] London: A Life In Maps - with a question about Abercrombie's eastern airport
 

"Tom Anderson" wrote:

Also, there's a copy of a map from the 1944 Abercrombie London masterplan,
mostly detailing the layout of the green belt, but it shows the locations
of airports. I recognised Heathrow, Northolt (i think) and the one down
near Croydon, but there was also one shown to the east, within the M25,
north of the river (i think - i didn't make an exact note). Any idea what
that might be?

There were on/off proposals for a London airport at Fairlop. It could be
that.

Chris

London: A Life In Maps - with a question about Abercrombie's eastern airport
 

Tom Anderson wrote:
Evening all,

.. I recognised Heathrow, Northolt (i think) and the one down
near Croydon, but there was also one shown to the east, within the M25,
north of the river (i think - i didn't make an exact note). Any idea what
that might be?

There was a Battle of Britain fighter station at Hornchurch, I believe.

[OTish] London: A Life In Maps - with a question about Abercrombie's
 

In article ,
(Tom Anderson) wrote:

Also, there's a copy of a map from the 1944 Abercrombie London
masterplan, mostly detailing the layout of the green belt, but it
shows the locations of airports. I recognised Heathrow, Northolt (i
think) and the one down near Croydon, but there was also one shown
to the east, within the M25, north of the river (i think - i didn't
make an exact note). Any idea what that might be?

North Weald?

--
Colin Rosenstiel

[OTish] London: A Life In Maps - with a question about Abercrombie's eastern airport
 

In message , Tom
Anderson writes

Also, there's a copy of a map from the 1944 Abercrombie London
masterplan, mostly detailing the layout of the green belt, but it shows
the locations of airports. I recognised Heathrow, Northolt (i think)
and the one down near Croydon, but there was also one shown to the
east, within the M25, north of the river (i think - i didn't make an
exact note). Any idea what that might be?

Undoubtedly Fairlop, which had been earmarked as a replacement for
Croydon long before Abercrombie.

In fact (and to tie-in with another recent thread here) I've long
suspected that the rather extraordinary idea of projecting the Central
Line round the little-used Fairlop loop came about because London
Transport had its eye on potential airport traffic after the war.

During the 1930s the LCC battled with the Crown Commissioners on the
purchase of Fairlop Plain, which the former wanted for housing but the
latter wanted to retain as open space for "uses such as golf or
aviation". The Greater London Regional Planning Commission (and, I
think, the Air Ministry) supported the use of the land for an aerodrome.
Abercrombie marked Fairlop Plain as one of four principal airport sites
to serve London, the others being Croydon, Heston (i.e. Heathrow) and
Potter Bar.

But eventually the war, and then the green belt, intervened - and so
Fairlop never did become the major London airport that was once
envisaged.
--
Paul Terry

[OTish] London: A Life In Maps - with a question about Abercrombie's eastern airport
 

Paul Terry wrote:

But eventually the war, and then the green belt, intervened - and so
Fairlop never did become the major London airport that was once
envisaged.

I don't think the Green Belt would prevent an airport, because AFAIK
transport use is exempt.

[OTish] London: A Life In Maps - with a question about Abercrombie'seastern airport
 

On Sun, 7 Jan 2007, Paul Terry wrote:

In message , Tom Anderson
writes

Also, there's a copy of a map from the 1944 Abercrombie London masterplan,
mostly detailing the layout of the green belt, but it shows the locations
of airports. I recognised Heathrow, Northolt (i think) and the one down
near Croydon, but there was also one shown to the east, within the M25,
north of the river (i think - i didn't make an exact note). Any idea what
that might be?

Undoubtedly Fairlop, which had been earmarked as a replacement for Croydon
long before Abercrombie.

Righto. Had never heard of this before. According to this map:

http://www.smartin67.freeserve.co.uk/sketch.jpg

And looking at an aerial photo:

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=fair...t=h&iwloc=addr

It looks like the airfield was about half the size of Heathrow:

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=heat...97504&t=h&om=1

But then i suppose it could have been expanded over the fields to the
east. Seems like quite a practical location for a station, i have to say!

In fact (and to tie-in with another recent thread here) I've long
suspected that the rather extraordinary idea of projecting the Central
Line round the little-used Fairlop loop came about because London
Transport had its eye on potential airport traffic after the war.

Makes sense. Although from a modern point of view, it would have made more
sense to keep the Ilford - Newbury Park connection, and use it to run a
Crossrail branch there!

tom

--
We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that
needs to be done. -- Alan Turing

[OTish] London: A Life In Maps - with a question about Abercrombie's eastern airport
 

In message , Tom
Anderson writes

It looks like the airfield was about half the size of Heathrow:

Don't forget that when Abercrombie was plotting and planning, what is
now Heathrow was a small airfield (150 acres) used mainly for aircraft
testing by the Fairey company. All of that was about to change very
quickly, of course, although Abercrombie would not have known.

In the end, I guess Heathrow offered more room than Fairlop for
expansion - but I also suspect that a site to the west, rather than
east, of London was preferred because flying was an extremely expensive
way to travel until the late 1960s, and Heathrow would be more
convenient than Fairlop for wealthy passengers needing to be chauffeured
to and from the west end, Kensington or the stockbroker belt.
--
Paul Terry

[OTish] London: A Life In Maps - with a question about Abercrombie's eastern airport
 

Paul Terry wrote:

In the end, I guess Heathrow offered more room than Fairlop for
expansion - but I also suspect that a site to the west, rather than
east, of London was preferred because flying was an extremely
expensive way to travel until the late 1960s, and Heathrow would be
more convenient than Fairlop for wealthy passengers needing to be
chauffeured to and from the west end, Kensington or the stockbroker
belt.

Heathrow, like nearly every main airport in the world, is upwind of the city
it serves, in order to maximise visibility at the airport.

[OTish] London: A Life In Maps - with a question about Abercrombie's eastern airport
 

John Rowland wrote:
Paul Terry wrote:

In the end, I guess Heathrow offered more room than Fairlop for
expansion - but I also suspect that a site to the west, rather than
east, of London was preferred because flying was an extremely
expensive way to travel until the late 1960s, and Heathrow would be
more convenient than Fairlop for wealthy passengers needing to be
chauffeured to and from the west end, Kensington or the stockbroker
belt.

Heathrow, like nearly every main airport in the world, is upwind of
the city it serves, in order to maximise visibility at the airport.

I always understood that Heathrow was unusual in being almost directly
upwind of the city, meaning that generally planes fly over the city
centre on their approach to land. (Anti-noise campaigners always claim
this is unique to Heathrow.) It's better to locate the airport at 90
degrees to the prevailing wind relative to the city.

Also, I don't buy the visibility reason, as it's in the Thames Valley
area which is probably one of the damper and more fog-prone areas around
London.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)