A New London Airport!!!

With all the talk about a new airport on our doorstep perhaps this is interesting...
From SRCC Newsletter.
LONDON AIRPORT (LULLINGSTONE) It was Ced's research for the Biggin Hill Heritage Trust that led to his discovery of the plans to build London Airport at Lullingstone, a project that very few seem to have heard about before. Around 1930, London's main airport was at Croydon which was in the London "fog belt" and frequent diversions had to be made to Gatwick. Because of this, Sir Alan Cobham was commissioned to do a survey on behalf of the Southern Railway, who had their own air service in 1930, to find a suitable site outside the 'fog belt', but within 25 miles of London. In 1935, Lullingstone Park had been selected. This was to be bigger than either Croydon or Gatwick and was chosen in 1937 to be the largest airport in the UK. It was to be built just 17 miles from the centre of London. Land was purchased, some of which was owned by the Kemp Town Brewery Company which also partly financed the building of the station. Work began to level the site which was more that 800 acres and 300 feet above sea level, Lullingstone Station was built a few hundred yards south of the Swanley tunnel. A short spur south of the station would go off to the west, underground to the main terminal buildings and a start had been made on this. It was planned that the main approach to the airport would be by rail direct, non-stop from Victoria or Charing Cross. There would be three runways, the principal runway would be one and a half miles long running North East to South West, ideal for the prevailing wind, the other two would be shorter, the position of the main runway is roughly where the M25 is now. In addition to the Kemp Town Brewery Company, finance would also come from the Southern Railway and Banks. All work stopped before the outbreak of WW2 and following the war it was decided to build the new London Airport on the site of a former RAF station at Heath Row, although there was no support for this and Lullingstone was abandoned for good. The station was demolished after the War, the Canopies from the platforms were used at Canterbury East and some of the ironwork was used elsewhere. The gateway of the footbridge and some of the platform can still be seen to this day along with the conductor rails being still between the tracks where the station was located. During WW2, a decoy airfield was 'built' on part of the Lullingstone site in an attempt to fool the German Bomber Pilots into thinking it was Biggin Hill. Six dummy Hurricanes were built by Green Brothers of
Hailsham and deployed around the 'airfield'. Green Brothers went on to build a hundred of these planes for other schemes. There were also dummy buildings and electric lights for the runway, the wind direction “T” and some red warning lights. Airmen were deployed from Biggin Hill at night to turn them on and off as needed and could leave-on some of the building lights as poor blackout precautions so as to attract attention.