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Villagers fighting to save homes from the bulldozer
Valentine Low, Evening Standard03.12.07
Long before there was Heathrow Airport, there was Sipson.
Jack Clark is 95 and moved to the village when he was 15. He lives in the same house he and his wife moved into 57 years ago.
"There were orchards and fields all around," he said.
"We used to go scrumping when we were kids. It was lovely. Nobody ever had any bloody money but we were all happy."
They are certainly not happy any more. A forgotten place, tucked away between the airport and the looming bulk of the Holiday Inn at the top of the M4 spur road, Sipson will be bulldozed out of existence if the proposals for Heathrow expansion go ahead.
About 1,000 years of history - Sipson was first mentioned in the records around 1110, although its name (Anglo-Saxon for "Sibbwine's farmstead") suggests it existed long before the Domesday Book - will disappear under a layer of tarmac and concrete.
Villagers are determined to fight the plans - every other house is plastered with campaign posters.
There is one in Mr Clark's front window. "It is diabolical how they are riding roughshod over people's lives," he said. "It is going to interfere with thousands and thousands of people. When I think of how the village used to be it breaks my heart."
One of the campaigners is Bryan Sobey, president of the Harmondsworth and Sipson Residents' Association, which was founded in 1950 to fight plans to expand Heathrow north of what is now the A4. Nothing much changes.
The former Customs officer and his wife Anne have lived in their house in Sipson since 1959. He remembers an idyllic existence in a village that had a church and youth club - and a Heathrow where the aircraft had romantic names such as Constellation and Stratocruiser.
They have been fighting proposals for a third runway since 1986.
Mr Sobey said: "I am absolutely infuriated that anybody has the right to knock down my home, particularly when the principal reason is because the airport is located in the wrong place. Heathrow is in a built-up area - it cannot be expanded without knocking down towns and villages."
It is not just the elderly who are against the plans. Inderjit Grewal, 34, who works in foreign exchange at the airport, bought a house in Sipson with her husband seven years ago. Her daughter Riya, four, starts at Heathrow primary school in the village in January.
"We've got lives here," she said. "We would have to start all over. Who says we could find another house in the same price range?
"They are doing all this consultation but they made up their minds a long time ago. Whatever they are going to do, they are going to do. What chance do we have?"
