mark the anniversary of the Battle of Britain held at the airfield. Civilian flights returned, including the first scheduled helicopter service from London. The buildings that were used for the BIF were sold as storage units for various companies. In March 1960, the airfield was closed as a result of the impending expansion of the airport at Elmdon and in 1962, the airfield site, the BIF site and nearby farmland was sold for construction of the overspill estate which started in 1964. The last hangars were demolished in 1992 for an industrial site. There are some strong symbolic links to these times in the shape of the Sentinel sculpture, a stained glass church window, and the names of tower blocks and streets on the estate. Remnants of the airfield also exist such as a row of ex-RAF housing along Church Road, and the three main roads on the estate were the original runways on airfield. Castle Vale estate Planning At the end of World War II, one third of housing within Birmingham was declared unfit for habitation and a major construction programme was needed to deal with problem. By 1950, Birmingham City Council had been constructing municipal housing to accommodate the rising population of Birmingham and to accommodate those who had been displaced by the slum clearances in the inner-city areas of the city, similar to the process which had started some 30 years earlier when the first council houses were built. Municipal house construction developed into high-rise construction in the mid-1950s with the guidance of Alwyn Sheppard Fidler, the City Architect of Birmingham. By 1962, however, the city council was demolishing more houses than it was constructing and Fidler urged the council to adopt the French Camus system which consisted of housing at a density of approximately 50 houses per hectare and 80 people per acre. The council refused this and demanded 48 homes per hectare with 75 people per acre. In a final attempt to convince the council, he proposed a 'garden city' layout for the Castle Bromwich Airfield site in 1963. This too was rejected and, as a result, Fidler resigned from his position. He was quickly succeeded by J. R. Sheridan-Shedden, the deputy City Architect who held the position temporarily. Upon taking the position, he designed a revised masterplan for the Castle Bromwich Airfield estate. The new masterplan used the Radburn Layout which consisted of super-blocks