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I suspect the choice of location has more to do with convenience for freight
Seems likely - maybe is was considered but would a 'freight only' airport be something that was possible, take it all out of heathrow (more space for passengers) and stick it in a more specialised airport somewhere (specifically, somewhere else where they won't start flying over my house :))
christianSpaceman-
A great deal of freight is transported in the holds of passenger aircraft, so no.
Edit: apologies for sounding curt - no time before meeting!
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All modern wide-bodied jets have been designed to carry many tons of freight, in addition to the passengers and their luggage. A look at the Wiki page of the venerable Boeing 747 will show how it has changed over the 40+ years it has been in production.
(csb: was once flying back from Singapore, overheard the [BA] crew discussing the barely a couple of minutes delay to take-off; a few standby passengers had been 'let down', as someone needed to get a pallet of pc hard drives into Europe overnight, and BA would make money on this freight compared to the minimal marginal return from standbys).
There are very few freight only flights into LHR, they cannot afford the landing slots.
The days of the 'Flying Tigers' cargo-only 747s being an everyday feature at LHR are long gone.East Midlands airport has built itself a reputation as the UK's premier airfreight hub for the likes of DHL/UPS etc.
c00ps
mespilus
I suspect the choice of location has more to do with convenience for freight than anything else. Seeing as most of that would end up in London and the SE I guess they want to be as close as possible to cut road transport costs. If being a "transport hub" was all that mattered then location wouldn't make much difference as most of the passengers would be flying straight out somewhere else anyway. A Midlands airport would make a lot more sense for holidaying Brits though.