Flypast: The fall of the Queen

May 22 2009 By Barry Dix

HERE'S a poser: What, 50 years ago was London's most popular venue for day trips, attracting up to 10,000 visitors a day at peak times?

The zoo? The Tower of London? Madame Tussauds? No, none of these. It was Heathrow's Queen's Building or, to be more precise, the spacious, multi-decked roof gardens.

Here, buffeted by the kerosene-laden breeze, their ears assailed by whining turboprops, ear-piercing jets and rasping piston engines, people of all ages would gather to gawp at the goings-on far below on the tarmac.

With commentators to tell them where each flight was coming from or going to, and even advise them when a celebrity was about to disembark, the crowds could sample a little of the glamour and excitement of air travel which, to most, was far beyond their own budgets.

When The Beatles flew home from their massively-successful US trip in early 1964, it was the one and only time the spectators created more noise than the planes. And it was all captured live on TV, in footage that has been seen a thousand times since.

Several thousand weeping, screaming, fainting fans of the Fab Four squeezed into every vantage point they could find atop the Queen's Building, in a manner which would leave modern-day health and safety experts aghast.

It was the Heathrow authorities themselves who decided to funnel all the fans into the building, after becoming concerned at the numbers congregating in Terminal 3.

They arranged for the Pan Am 707 carrying the Beatles to taxi to a halt in front of the Queen's Building.

But as one of the commentators, Flo Kingdon, recalled in Alan Gallop's book Time Flies, trouble began when John, Paul, George and Ringo appeared at the top of the steps.

She remembers: "Everyone surged forward to get a better look and part of a wall collapsed. It could have been a disaster, but fortunately no one was seriously hurt."

A decade later there were similar scenes when the arrival of likes of the Osmonds and David Cassidy brought thousands of 'teeny-boppers'descending on Heathrow.

Now the Queen's Building will soon be no more. Opened by the Queen herself on December 14, 1955, and designed by renowned British architect Frederick Gibberd, it has the misfortune to stand in the wrong place.

If it was elsewhere in London its pedigree and appearance would spark off fierce opposition to the very thought of demolition and it would probably be converted into a museum or art gallery.

But there is little place for nostalgia at the world's busiest international airport and the Queen's Building will close in a few weeks' time, prior to being knocked down to make way for the new £1.5bn Heathrow East, a scheme which also sounds the death knell for Terminal 2.

My own memories of the Queen's Building are many and varied. I was one of those who spent many an hour watching in awe from the roof gardens at the non-stop airport activity.

A few years later, working in the windowless, air-conditioned office of the Brenard news agency, there were long evening shifts full of boredom, alleviated only by raucous singalong sessions of rugby songs and pop classics, fuelled by bottles of Pils lager brought across from the Control Tower bar.

If you were one of those unfortunates in nearby offices who regularly heard this tuneless racket reverberating around the building, let me apologise now, even if it is almost 40 years too late!