Croydon Airport: a piece of aeronautical history.
I stayed in a hotel near the airport when I was doing an art fair at Fairfield Halls in 2025 and I was amazed to find this bit of historical Croydon. I made an illustration of Croydon Airport for when I returned to the art fair later in the year as it was a really interesting piece of local history.
The visitor centre is located in Britain’s first integrated airport terminal and control tower at Airport House in Croydon. The airport was used for WW1 and WW2 operations and was London’s main international airport until 1946 when Heathrow took over, but it continued to be a major regional airport until 1959.
This is the finished pen & ink drawing before it was scanned in and worked on in photoshop
This World with Wings wall plaque is gold and hangs on a wall in Croydon Airport Visitor Centre: a Neo-classical designed building typical of the early 20th century.
I chose these two aeroplanes for the illustration as they were the first and the last planes to take off from there, in 1915 and 1959.