Village vows to fight Britain’s Heathrow expansion

Jack Clarke, 96, who has lived in Sipson since the days when surrounding farmland supplied fruit and vegetables for London's markets, said he will never accept compensation to move.

"I won't leave," he told Reuters. "They will not get me out of this house, I have been here too long."

Plans for a new runway, sixth terminal and extra roads at the world's busiest international airport have prompted fierce opposition in the small village, wedged between two of Britain's busiest motorways on the airport's northern boundary.

The airport's 9 billion pound expansion, approved by government , will lead to the destruction of more than 700 homes, a 500-year-old pub and a school.

The development is a world away from the days when farms around Sipson grew crops to sell in the capital.

Clarke, who has a "No Third Runway" poster in the window of his modest redbrick house, worked on those farms for nearly 40 years after moving to the village shortly before the start of Great Depression of 1929.

The airport opened in 1946 and has expanded hugely since, with 68,000 people working there.

His granddaughter Jackie Hand, 36, a hairdresser who works in the village, said: "My whole family heritage is going to be wiped out by the third runway.

"What can we do when the government takes a decision? We are just a cog in a very big wheel."