Massive underground warehouse planned near Heathrow
Plans for a massive underground warehouse near Heathrow have been submitted to Hounslow Council.
Both schemes will be developed on the site using top down construction methods as part of a process of underground mineral extraction. The site known as Rectory Farm, which sits alongside The Parkway (A312) and Bath Road (A4) lies above one of the country’s largest remaining deposits of high quality gravel.The proposal put forward by investment and asset management company Formal Investments envisages up to 1.88 million sq ft of warehousing and storage space underneath a 110-acre public park.
Rectory Farm – a bird’s view. Credit: VOGT
The idea is that as the park opens, work will start to extract the gravel from beneath the surface by a method called ‘top-down construction’. An area will be fenced off, the top soil scraped back, piles sunk into the ground and a concrete slab poured over the top. The soil is then replaced and landscaped, the hoarding removed and
the area returned to public use while the gravel is extracted from beneath the ground.
The underground space created by the gravel extraction will create nearly 2 million sq ft of 9m high warehouse floorspace.