This post is part of a new series that I’ve started, aimed at showing – through a photo or two – how London looks like outside the District Line, where people actually live. You can find the other installments here. 

I spent most of my working life in and around airports, in that sort of no-mans-land made of spaghetti junctions, more-or-less derelict warehouses, hangars, power stations and the ubiquitous airport hotels with their corollary of bewildered guests. Heathrow airport is no different but it also offers a few unusual sights, vestiges of a bucolic past, before London swelled and encircled this land with an airport and the nation’s largest car park, the M25 orbital motorway. In the village of Longford, sandwiched between the A4 and the north runway, a small corner of the old Berkshire remains.

Heathrow Special Needs Farm, zone 6.