Elmdon Airport was the original name of what is now Birmingham Airport, and its creation marked one of the most dramatic changes ever to take place in the landscape of eastern Birmingham and north Warwickshire. Before the airport existed, the area around Sheldon, Elmdon and Bickenhill was largely rural, made up of farms, fields and old estates such as those linked to Sheldon Hall and Rectory Farm. This countryside, which had remained largely unchanged for centuries, was suddenly transformed in the late 1930s by the arrival of aviation.
The airport was built in the late 1930s on open farmland and officially opened in 1939 under the name Elmdon Airport, taking its title from the nearby village of Elmdon rather than from Birmingham, which at that time lay just beyond the boundary. It was designed as a modern municipal airport for Birmingham and the wider Midlands, with an impressive Art Deco terminal building that reflected the optimism and technological confidence of the age. From the outset, Elmdon was intended to connect the industrial heart of Britain to London and to major European cities, making air travel a practical part of everyday life.
Only months after it opened, the outbreak of the Second World War changed its role completely. The airport was taken over by the military and became RAF Elmdon, used for training, transport flights and wartime operations. Its runways and hangars became part of the national war effort, and the surrounding area was reshaped to support military aviation. When peace returned in 1945, the airport reverted to civilian use, but it was no longer simply a local airfield. It was now the main air gateway for a growing Birmingham and an expanding Midlands economy.
During the post-war decades, air travel grew rapidly, and Elmdon Airport expanded with new runways, terminals and support buildings. As Birmingham itself grew and its boundaries moved outward, the airport was absorbed into the city’s identity and became known as Birmingham International Airport, later shortened to Birmingham Airport. The old name, Elmdon, gradually faded from public use, though it survives in the original terminal building, which is still standing today as one of the finest examples of 1930s airport architecture in Britain.
The arrival of Elmdon Airport permanently changed the character of Sheldon and its neighbouring villages. Fields and farms that had existed since medieval times were replaced by runways, roads and terminals, and a landscape once shaped by agriculture and Tudor estates became dominated by aviation and global travel. Elmdon Airport was therefore not just the beginning of Birmingham’s air links to the world, but the moment when this part of the city stepped decisively from its rural past into the modern age.
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