Harmondsworth


Harmondsworth is a village in the London Borough of Hillingdon in the county of Greater London with a short border to the south onto [Heathrow Airport|London Heathrow Airport] and close to the Berkshire county border. The village has no railway stations, but adjoins the M4 motorway and the A4 road. Harmondsworth was in the historic county of Middlesex until 1965. It is an ancient parish that once included the large hamlets of Heathrow, Longford and Sipson. Longford and Sipson have modern signposts and facilities as separate villages, remaining to a degree interdependent such as for schooling. The Great Barn and parish church are medieval buildings in the village. The largest proportion of land in commercial use is related to air transport and hospitality. The village includes public parkland with footpaths and abuts the River Colne and biodiverse land in its Regional Park to the west, once the grazing meadows and woodlands used for hogs of Colnbrook.
The west of the parish has two major airline headquarters and two immigration detention centres: the larger is for a maximum of 620 men without leave (permission) to enter or remain in the United Kingdom. Many international visitors stay within the church-based bounds of Harmondsworth, as all hotels are branded as "Heathrow", a former hamlet and other farmsteads that were absorbed by the airport.
In October 2016 it was announced by the government that Heathrow Airport would receive permission to apply for a third runway. According to current expansion plans, around half of the existing village of Harmondsworth will have to be demolished to make way for the north-west runway and surrounding grass safety area. The other half, including the parish church and Great Barn, will be only a few metres from the airport perimeter.

History

Harmondsworth is mentioned in Domesday Book, its name coming from the Anglo-Saxon Heremōdes worþ, meaning "Heremōd's enclosure", or Heremundes worþ, meaning "Heremund's enclosure".
Harmondsworth remains an ecclesiastical parish, with the name first recorded in AD 780 when King Offa granted land to his servant Aeldred.
Before 1066 the manor was owned by Harold Godwinson, and at the Conquest it passed to William I. In 1069 it was granted by the king, on the suggestion of William FitzOsbern, 1st Earl of Hereford, to the Benedictine Abbey of Holy Trinity, Rouen, afterwards known as St. Catherine's, which held it in 1086 and then until 1391.
The manor and advowson, together with those of Tingewick, were acquired from the abbey and prior in 1391 by William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, and formed part of the endowment of Winchester College and New College, Oxford, aka St. Mary College of Winchester in Oxford. Winchester College and New College retained the manor until 1543 when it was surrendered to Henry VIII in exchange for property elsewhere.
In 1547 the lordship and manor was granted to William Paget, 1st Baron Paget, KG, PC.
The Pagets held on to the manor until the eighteenth century, selling most of early during the time of the heir of Henry Paget, 2nd Earl of Uxbridge, Henry Bayley-Paget, 1st Earl of Uxbridge. William, Lord Paget sold some of it in 1672. Via his daughter Penelope Foley the Pagets were ancestors of Charles Darwin.
Harmondsworth as an ancient parish of 30 hides or changed from agrarian and a few, isolated London suburban homes to mostly industrial gradually in 1929 with the opening of the Colnbrook by-pass which by-passed diminutive Longford to the north.
Harmondsworth civil parish from its 1880s creation until its 1964 abolition contained the same areas as its religious counterpart. Industrial development began in 1930 with the opening of the Road Research Laboratory (RRL) on this road. In the same year, the Fairey Aviation Company opened an airfield, the Great West Aerodrome, south-west of Heathrow. This formed the nucleus of the later airport, and the Fairey hangar was eventually incorporated into Heathrow Airport as a fire station.
By the late 1930s some residential building had taken place, although almost entirely in the northern half of the parish. Small estates were built off Hatch Lane around Candover Close and Zealand Avenue and further building took place along Sipson Road, around Blunts Avenue, and along the north side of the Bath Road at Sipson Green. Longford remained virtually untouched. A brick-works was established by the corner of Cain's Lane and Heathrow Road and the area of former heathland was extensively worked for gravel, sand, and grit. In the 1930s Middlesex County Council opened a large sewage pumping station to the west of Perry Oaks, which was converted to Heathrow Terminal 5 in the early 21st century. The Great South West Road touched the south-east corner of the parish but played no part in its development. Although many of the orchards survived, their numbers had been greatly reduced and it seems probable that much of the former fruit-growing area was being used for market gardening. In 1944 Harmondsworth and Sipson retained their agricultural character despite some suburban housing. It was then suggested that further expansion in the Yiewsley and West Drayton area should be curtailed, as the land was primarily in demand for agriculture, which was greatly adhered to until 1971.
In 1944, however, the modern pattern of Harmondsworth began to emerge with the transfer of the Fairey airfield to the Royal Air Force and its subsequent development by the Air Ministry as Heathrow RAF station. This entailed the complete demolition of Heathrow and Perry Oaks hamlets, and widespread draining of the old flooded gravel pits. Many of the small buildings along the south side of the Bath Road that were still standing in 1960 were erected by the RAF.
Although not a post town, in printed form Harmondsworth is frequently seen in books. From 1937 the offices and warehouses of Penguin Books were here until their gradual closure in the 1990s. In this period its books published in the country bore the publication location, "Harmondsworth, Middlesex".
In 1965 it became part of the London Borough of Hillingdon in the newly formed ceremonial county of Greater London.

Henry III Fine Rolls

Fine rolls of Henry III.
  • : "For the abbot of Rouen. The abbot of Sainte-Trinité-du-mont-de-Rouen gives the king £10 for having seisin of the manor of Harmondsworth after the death of the abbot of the same place, his predecessor."
  • : 18 January Westminster. "For the abbot of Sainte-Trinité-du-mont-de-Rouen. By a fine of £10 which the abbot of Sainte-Trinité-du-mont-de-Rouen has made with him, the king has rendered to him the manors of Tingewick in Buckinghamshire and Harmondsworth in Middlesex, which the king caused to be taken into his hand by reason of the death of William, formerly abbot of the same place, predecessor of the aforesaid abbot. Order to Henry of Wingham and his co-escheators in the aforesaid counties to cause the aforesaid abbot to have full seisin of the aforesaid manors together with the issues received in the meantime."
  • : 24 June Westminster. "Concerning a fine for the abbot of St Katherine's Rotom'. The king, by a fine of ten marks which the abbot of St. Katherine's de monte Rotomagen' has made with the king, has rendered the manors of Tingewik in Buckinghamshire and Harmondsworth in Middlesex which were taken into the king’s hand by reason of the death of Robert sometime abbot of the same place predecessor of the aforesaid abbot. Order to Master Richard de Clifford', escheator this side of the Trent, to cause the same abbot to have full seisin without delay of the aforesaid manors together with everything taken therefrom."

Priors of the alien priory of S. Catherine du Mont, Harmondsworth

  • William, occurs 1260
  • John de Walemond, occurs 1276
  • Richard, occurs 1279
  • William de Bosco alias de Yvelont, occurs 1297
  • John de Ibelound
  • Humphrey le Conte-Poyntour, occurs 1317
  • John de Fraunkevyle, occurs 1321
  • William de Pestlamore, occurs 1329
  • John Busot
  • Roger Sorel, occurs 1342, 1345; recently dead in 1351
  • John Cibe, occurs 1351;
  • Robert Beauchamp, occurs 1352; 'late prior' in 1392
In 1390 William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, secured both papal and royal authority to acquire the lands of alien priories for his colleges, and in the following year he obtained from Richard II a licence for St. Catherine's Abbey to sell him all its possessions in England, apart from the Priory of Blyth. These possessions comprised the manor of Harmondsworth with the advowson of the church and vicarage, the manor of Tingewick with its advowson, the advowsons of Saham Toney and St. Leonard's, and certain yearly pensions. The Bishop sent a member of his household, Richard Altryncham, to Rouen to negotiate with the abbey and convent about this buying of the priory as an endowment for his colleges. A sale was agreed on 15 October 1391, the price being fixed at 8,400 gold francs, which were paid in 1392 through a firm of Genoese bankers. The bishop also undertook to provide for the prior Robert Beauchamp and for John le Cellier, his companion, all such things in the way of wine, food, clothing, and lodging as befitted religious of their estate for the rest of their lives. He would also furnish a chapel for the abbey. The Harmondsworth property, centred on the priory which stood to the west of Manor Farm and the tithe barn, thus became part of the endowment of his two colleges at Winchester and Oxford.

Church

The historic parish church of Harmondsworth is the church of St Mary, of which parts date from the 12th century. There is an opinion that Heathrow Airport is legally responsible for maintaining this church's chancel, because the airport now owns land which in 1819 at the enclosing of the commons had been assigned in lieu of tithes used to maintain the chancel.
Some Harmondsworth clergy:
  • 1437–1440† Richard Wyche
  • 1511–1515 John Edmunds
  • 1594–1623† Leonard Davies
  • 1628–1650† Emanuel Hodges
  • 1664–1697† John Jenney
  • 1698–1714† John Bush
  • 1714–1727† Thomas Fyson
  • 1727–1760† John Lidgould
  • 1760–1764† William Rayner
  • 1764–1772 William Harvest
  • 1772–1779 Charles Jeffreys Cottrell
  • 1779–1786 Robert Burt
  • 1786–1796 John Hubbard
  • 1796–1808† John Theodosius Langhorne
  • 1809–1843† Frederick Tomkins
  • 1844–1866 Robert Lill De Burgh
  • 1866–1874† James Percy Arnold
  • 1874–1875† John Hitchcock
  • 1875–1879 Henry Worsley
  • 1878–1882 Thomas Curling Lewis
  • 1882–1916 John Charles Taylor
  • 1916–1924† William Bellett Sealy
† ''Vicar died in post''

Great Barn

The other notable historic building in Harmondsworth is the Grade I-listed Harmondsworth Great Barn, Britain's largest barn. On the site of an earlier great barn, it was put up between 1425 and 1427 on land bought by William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, in 1391, to endow his colleges Winchester College and New College, Oxford. It is the largest extant timber-framed building in England and was described by the English poet John Betjeman as the "Cathedral of Middlesex". As of January 2012 the barn is owned by English Heritage.
A similar barn, built 25 years later in 1451–53, but shorter, is at Old Burghclere, Hampshire. This monumental barn was also built on land acquired by William of Wykeham. While the Harmondsworth barn was part of Winchester College's endowment the Burghclere barn passed to the family of Fiennes who had married the heiress of Wykeham's great-nephew heir. It now is part of the Highclere estate belonging to Lord Carnarvon.

Government

Local government

United Kingdom government

There are two UK Border Agency immigration removal centres in Harmondsworth: Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre and Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre.

Cottage Hospital

The Harlington, Harmondsworth and Cranford Cottage Hospital was established in 1884 and opened in 1885. It was halfway between Harmondsworth and Cranford on the Sipson Road, about four furlongs west of Harlington.

Economy

British Airways is headquartered in Waterside in Harmondsworth. The building officially opened in 1998. An office of American Airlines occupies Orient House, Waterside.
Harmondsworth has two pubs: The Crown and the Five Bells.
The village was formerly home to Penguin Books, from 1937.

Education

Harmondsworth Primary School is in Harmondsworth.

Transport

The area is served by various buses and by West Drayton railway station centred north, across the M4 motorway. The Bath Road is the predecessor to this route and passes through the village with junctions in the neighbouring villages leading to the M4 motorway.

Demography

The area comprises well-populated and scarcely populated areas but which have differing constitutions as to the buildings in which people live and stay: hotels, homes and the two immigration control institutions. Thus the population fluctuates to a greater or lesser extent, dependent on land use.

Some people associated with Harmondsworth