Buildings Nos 15 and 17

Details

FIGHELDEAN

1382/0/10008 AIRFIELD CAMP (FORMER RAF NETHERAVON) 01-DEC-05 Buildings Nos 15 and 17

GV II Offices and stores. 1913, by the War Office's Directorate of Fortifications and Works. Softwood framing with asbestos-cement panel facings and linings, joints covered with painted softwood battens, set to concrete levelling slabs with plinth offset. Asbestos-cement diagonal slating.

PLAN: These two small gabled buildings are aligned with the Sergeants' Mess (qv) to their right, facing across a parade ground to the airfield. Each is of a small span, with simple division into 2 or 3 rooms.

EXTERIOR: Built to the same design philosophy as both the Officers' and the Airmen's accommodation groups, to W and E respectively (qqv), the buildings have small sash windows set to a grid of vertical and horizontal battens framing openings, and with sole plate, sill and head bands. Building 15 has 3 wide-spaced sashes to the front, and near each end a panelled door with overlight. To the right of the front door is a run of window at caves level, above three small contiguous lights, also here a ridge stack. The rear has give 12-pane sashes, including one paired, and the E gable has one small light. Building 17 has two 12-pane sash, door with overlight to left, and a further door under attached door to porch to right. Each gable has 2 sashes, and the rear a 12-paned at each end. Central brick ridge stack with 3 flues.

HISTORY: These two small buildings are important in linking visually and historically the two major accommodation groups, and are important survivals in an area unified by a consistent design approach. With Upavon and Larkhill, Netheravon comprises one of three sites around the Army training ground at Salisbury Plain which relate to the crucial formative phase in the development of military aviation in Europe, prior to the First World War. It is remarkable how the layout of pre-1914 buildings on the domestic site has been retained intact, and how the principles upon which the base layout was established - a combination of topography and its historical context as a prototype military air base - have formed the template within which subsequent phases of rebuilding and development have operated. Whilst the remains of the technical site at Netheravon are fragmentary, the domestic site has survived in a complete state of preservation. It has the best-preserved suite of barracks buildings of any of the 301 bases in the United Kingdom occupied by the RAF in November 1918, these in turn being modelled on standard types of Victorian cavalry barracks. There are no sites of this degree of preservation surviving from any of the other combatant nations of the First World War - with the notable exception of the combined mess and hangar at Schleissheim, sited just to the north of Munich and established in 1912 as the base of the Royal Bavarian Flying Corps. With the exception of the Officers' Mess and Chalets, which have retained important interior details, the buildings on the domestic site are principally of interest for their external completeness and relationship to each other as part of this planned group.

For further details on the history of this site, see the Officers' Mess and Chalets (qv).

(C S Dobinson, RAF Netheravon, a short structural history (report for English Heritage), 1998; Operations Record Books, PRO AIR 28/ 582, 1090; drawings at Larkhill Garrison)

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

495422

Legacy System:

LBS

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