factories of the Sunbury Industrial Estate in World War II and was still a halt until at least 1962. Until the 1950s there was very little new building in the western half of Sunbury parish. Gravel-working had left many large pools around Upper Halliford and Charlton, and the rest of the land was open, with many market-gardens and glasshouses. A good deal of land still remained open in 1959 when gravel-working was continuing as well as new building east, north and west of the formerly completely linear village. Geography Surrounded on all sides by green buffer, the village heart is southwest of London and NNE of the county town, Guildford with easy access to the River Thames to the south, its station being the same to the north, and Heathrow Airport centred to the north. A bypass of the A244 cuts off a western tract of housing linked by a pedestrian crossing. It leaves far less traffic in the village heart compared to the northern stretch (higher numbers) of Upper Halliford Road, whose west side fronts quite spacious housing and a large nature pond, whereas its east side has Grange Farm park home estate, farmhouse with smallholding, Halliford (or Manor Park) recreation ground, woodland and another smallholding before the large road bridge at the boundary with Sunbury Common. The bridge passes over the Shepperton Branch Line and the M3 motorway. In 2001 Halliford gave a population figure of 3,011. Elevations, Soil and Geology Elevations range between 12m AOD which applies for most of the village, with a maximum of 12.4m excluding bridge in the west, to 10.8m AOD in the residential road closest to one of the River Colne's many distributaries, the River Ash. In regards to geology, the former flood plain and river course has shaped the almost flat former and present flood plain landscape from just north Heathrow Airport, as far west as Windsor, Berkshire to Brentford, Greater London with free draining alluvium and organic deposits forming a wide area of soil including Spelthorne, underlaid deeper with a mixture of gravel aquifers and London Clay which gives rise to two types of soil of free and poor drainage across all of the lower-lying parts of the London Basin. Soil across Spelthorne is categorised as "free draining slightly acid and loamy". Landmarks Upper Halliford Green and the Upper Halliford Conservation Area Much of the bypassed Upper Halliford Road area