Early Days of Gatwick Airport.
Another short leaflet has been discovered in our archives and is reproduced here.
The original document is an extract from a 1996 publication entitled ‘ARCHIVE – The quarterly Journal for British Industrial and Transport History.’ This particular article was called ‘Gatwick Airport and its Beehive Terminal’ and was compiled by John King. We have attempted to seek authority to reproduce this material but have not been able to contact the original publishers. By its publication this material is already in the public domain.
Horley Local History Society have consequently placed the material on our website in June 2024 and will willingly take it down or pay an agreed fee if the copyright owners get in touch.
Also included at the end of the main article are some photographs of The Beehive taken in March 2025 by Doug Cox.
GATWICK AIRPORT and its ‘BEEHIVE’ TERMINAL
1930 to 1945 by John King
(Photographs from the collections of BAA, Alan Timbrell, British Rail, Eve Brothers & the Desoutter family and some as indicated)
The name Gatwick first came to the nation’s attention when the race course was opened in 1891, following the closure of the one at Woodside near Croydon. This circa 1910 view shows the band stand, centre left, dwarfed by the elegant wooden main grandstand behind.
When the race course first opened, it was very much in the country and it was thus fortunate that the London Brighton and South Coast Railway decided to open a special station to serve it, although trains we’re only to stop on race days. A Brighton Express, hauled by one of R.J.Billington’s B2 4-4-0 locomotives, thunders through the station in this circa 1910 view.
How many of those who flew out of Gatwick last summer on holiday realised that on the southern edge of the airport stands a building almost trapped in its sixty-plus year history? Commonly known since the war as the ‘Beehive’, the building was the passenger terminal from 1936 to 1958. More than that, it was the world’ s first circular airport passenger terminal.
Indeed, how many Gatwick travellers realise the airport’s history goes back to 1936? In fact the Gatwick story begins in 1930, when two young men, Ronald Waters of Reigate and his younger friend John Mockford, had just learnt to fly, They decided to go into the aviation business and sought a suitable airfield. Commencing in the spring of 1930 from Penshurst, an Emergency Landing Ground on the route from Croydon to the Continent, they soon found a field next to Gatwick Racecourse which more suited their requirements.
Obtaining an Air Ministry licence effective from 1st August 1930, Waters and Mockford moved their small collection of light aircraft to Gatwick. During the ensuing two years, they embarked on a programme of pilot instruction and joy riding, with the odd charter operated in the name of their company, Home Counties Aircraft Services Limited. They also formed the Surrey Aero Club for the social side, utilising a centuries old farmhouse as the clubhouse, where much merriment took place. There was not enough serious business however, and in May 1932 the airfield was acquired by the Essex-based Redwing Aircraft Company, the manufacturer of an attractive side-byside two-seater. The new owner gave Gatwick more stability and a School of Flying & Aeronautical Engineering was established, although the Surrey Aero Club continued in the old farmhouse.
Redwing’s owner, a rich American expatriate, tired of aviation after a while and, on 30th September 1933, sold the airfield for £13,500 to Morris Jackaman, an accomplished young pilot from Slough. It was at this stage that Gatwick first appeared to have a future, as Jackaman had a vision of developing it into an airport for scheduled services. He quickly formed a company, Airports Limited, to manage the airfield and initiated various improvements. One thing that particularly worried Morris was the design for a terminal. He was still living with his parents near Slough, to the west of London and one night, probably in 1934, Morris was working late in his study when his father came into the room. ‘Go to bed Morris’, his father admonished, “or you will be thinking in circles’.
‘That’s it’, thought Morris, ‘a circular terminal’. This story sounds corny but it is true and thus was born the world’s first circular airport terminal. Morris subsequently obtained a patent on the building, seemingly because of the design of some moving parts – the passageways which were to telescope out on rails from the terminal to the aircraft. The development of Gatwick was not to prove an easy matter, however. Contact was soon made with the architects Alan Marlow, Frank Hoar and Bill Lovett, and drawings were completed by the spring of 1935. The problems came not with the building itself but the drainage of the airport. The work became difficult due to the proximity of the River Mole and its tributary streams, which meant the site tended to become extremely muddy when it rained.
Morris soon realised that the challenge of Gatwick was too much financially for one man and Airports Limited was made into a public company in 1935. Later, he was joined by Marcel Desoutter of artificial leg fame. Desoutter had broken a leg in a pre-WWI aviation accident and had had to have it amputated after gangrene set in. Refusing to accept that a wooden leg was his only option, with his brother he had designed and constructed an artificial leg for himself, made out of duraluminium. Subsequently, the Ministry showed an interest in his invention during the war and he set up a company to manufacture artificial limbs for other injured pilots and servicemen.
The main London / Brighton railway line ran alongside the airport’s eastern boundary and Jackaman always regarded it as the key to Gatwick’s success. He did not find the Southern Railway very responsive at first but eventually the powers at Waterloo decided to co-operate by building an airport station, which would be linked to the terminal by a tunnel. There was also the airline problem. At first, no one wanted to move to Gatwick. Croydon, then London’s principal airport, may not have been ideal but it was near the capital and was the focal point of the international airlines serving it. Eventually, Hillman’s Airways, which operated some domestic and Continental services from Abridge in Essex, decided that Gatwick could be the airport of the future. The new terminal was completed in the spring of 1936 but, in the meantime, Hillman’s Airways had merged with three others to form British Airways Limited. Fortunately for Airports Limited, the new airline decided to move all of its London services to Gatwick, which by this time included such destinations as the Isle of Wight, Paris, North Germany and Scandinavia.
The first scheduled service from the new Gatwick was on Sunday 17th May 1936, to Paris. This was followed on the Monday by the service to Germany and Scandinavia, the Isle of Wight service starting later in the month. The official opening of the new facilities was on Saturday 6th June 1936. It was a grand occasion with many and varied aircraft at a well-attended air display. An attempt at human flight by a young American, Clem Sohn, nearly came horribly unstuck when his parachute became entangled with his wings but he was not seriously injured although suffering a bumpy landing.
Gatwick’s future with its novel circular terminal was now surely secure but such was not the case. Not only were there a number of accidents by British Airways but there was also above average rainfall in the first winter, the airport subsequently becoming waterlogged. How could it have happened? To begin with, it must be remembered that before the war few international airports in Europe had concrete runways. In Gatwick’s case, the problem was still the drainage – some of the pipe drains had collapsed, inter alia. British Airways pulled out in disgust in February 1937, moving temporarily to Croydon.
There had to be a scapegoat of course for the airport company’s troubles. Thus Morris Jackaman, the man with a vision who had bought Gatwick in 1933, withdrew from the scene, eventually going overseas as the Air Ministry’s Civil Aviation representative, leaving Marcel Desoutter to become the sole Managing Director of the company. After the war, Morris Jackaman settled in Australia where he took up farming. He died in 1980, some weeks after Gatwick celebrated its fiftieth anniversary as a licensed aerodrome.
This aerial photograph of Gatwick race course, showing it’s proximity to the railway station which ensured its success. When the race course disappeared under a new runway in 1958, the bandstand, near the centre of this picture, was rescued and stands today in the gardens of Crawley town centre. The present Gatwick station is on the site of the Racecourse station.
In the beginning – a line up of aeroplanes belonging to Home Counties Aircraft Services Limited in the late autumn of 1930. From left to right they are a Bulté (00-ALD), an Avro 504 (G-AACW), a Blackburn Bluebird (G-AAVG) and a de Havolland DH 60X Moth (G-EBWX). Sealandair Ltd (on the fuselage of the nearest aircraft) was the UK agent for the Belgian manufacturere Bulté. The aircraft was not a good aquisition by Waters and it never entered the UK air register. Consequently it was not supposed to leave terra firma, although occasionally it was flown around the aerodrome for the hell of it until it began to fall apart. Waters never paid for it (he may have paid a deposit) and it was eventually repossessed for this reason.
One of the last activities organised at the aerodrome by Ronald Waters, Gatwick’s founder, was this aeroplane and motor cycle racing meet on Easter Monday 1932. It was not a success due to heavy rainfall and subsequent water logging.
Above is an aerial view of the aerodrome taken in 1933 around the time it was changing hands yet again, this time to Morris Jackaman. Clearly shown is the area developed by the Surrey Aero Club; future development of Gatwick by Jackaman occupied the fields directly behind the clubhouse, leading up to the railway line running across the rear of the picture.
This clearly ‘arranged’ but nevertheless charming period study was taken at a tea party at Gatwick, organised by the airports second owner, the Redwing Aircraft company. The photograph shows Frank Payne, chief flying instructor of the Surrey Aero Club, standing with his wife-to-be Peggy in front of a Redwing machine.
Using a simple rope and pulley system, three workmen haul a sheet of corrugated roofing asbestos up to two colleagues perched rather precariously in the upper girders of the British Airways twin hanger. This picture would make an ideal “How many dangerous working practices can you spot?” question. Health and safety officials today would undoubtably have a fit! Note particularly the narrow planks on which the two men are kneeling perched between the trusses. This early 1936 photograph also shows progress on the new railway station in the distance which has gained a footbridge and nameboards.
There were several other prominent airlines with major activities at Gatwick including Dan Air, British Midland, Britannia and Laker but not all stayed the course.Throughout the 1960s and 70s the airport’s terminal facilities were constantly being enlarged although the original plan to build a second runway was abandoned. In the meantime the Beehive had continued in use as offices for various Airlines, companies and the British Airports Authority. In 1986, on 11th of June, members of the Croydon Airport Society and Sussex Industrial Archaeology Society gathered with Morris Jackaman’s widow and daughter to hear BAA Gatwick director Guy Bell, recall the events of 1936 and the struggles of the various pioneers. Since that meeting, BAA has been privatised but the new owners of Gatwick and it’s major users will never forget those visionaries of the 1930s, without whose perseverance we would not have the Airport today. They have a constant reminder, should they need it, as the Beehive still stands proudly, between the Railway and the A23, in the shadow of offices of the Civil Aviation Authority.
The Beehive is not listed however, for reasons that have never been clear, although the building has been altered little over the years. BAA however, regards the building as almost a temple to the 1930 pioneers and it’s property department has plans to enhance it’s appearance in a way that is sympathetic to its original construction. With the support of the BAA, British Airways and voluntary groups such as SIAS and CAS it is hoped English Heritage will be able to persuade the department of national Heritage to pay honour to the words of the Secretary of State for air, Viscount Swinton, when, in 1936 upon re-opening Gatwick, he referred to the ‘genius of Morris Jackaman’.
In March 2025 HLHS was asked by the BBC Sounds department to provide information about the Beehive for a programme in the Secret Surrey series and Doug Cox attended. These are some of the photographs taken of The Beehive 90 years after its construction.
It is now used as rented office space by a variety of businesses and kept in a magnificent condition with the exception of the Tunnel which is still plagued with water ingress as it was when first built.
This photo shows the rails on which the aircraft passenger access gantries were moved. Ther were 5 of these spread around the terminal.
This photo shows the Tunnel which joined the Beehive to the Railway Station 130 yards away. Constant water ingress is a problem today as it was in 1936. The Tunnel is not accessible beyond the gate shown. Origionally it had display cabinets along its length which displayed wares from Horley’s shops.
When passengers exited the Tunnel they walked up this staircase to the main concourse area. The handrails are the original fittings.
This view shows the main entrance at ground level from the main concourse area.
This photo shows the view north along the main concourse. The upper floor can be seen and in the 1930s this upper floor led round to the restaurant area overlooking the airfield itself.
A similar view in the opposite direction.
The whole Concourse area is now illuminated by ‘Wing’ shaped lighting.
Access to the former Control Tower is by a very steep staircase.
This is the present view from the Control Tower. In 1936 the airfield would have been visible through these windows.
This photograph is on the wall of the present Beehive Reception Area.