Building no 38A (Handley Page Hangars)

Details

FIGHELDEAN

1382/0/10013 AIRFIELD CAMP (FORMER RAF NETHERAVON) 01-DEC-05 Building No 38A (Handley Page Hangars)

GV II Linked range of 5 hangars for Handley Page 0/400 bombers. 1918, probably by Lt J.G.N. Clift, Royal Engineers. Bath stone outer walls and buttresses, brickwork inner walls and partitions, steel trusses carrying corrugated aluminium roofing.

PLAN: Five clear-span sheds, each 45.4 x 13.4m (149' x 44'), each with 7.3m (24') clear height within. A central cross-wall divides each shed into two sections, and there were formally full-width Essavian folding doors each end, now with various modified openings in block walls at the airfield end, and block walls, some with buttresses at the N end.

EXTERIOR: The long outer walls at either end of the range are in 12 bays, in standard-sized Bath Stone blocks, stabilised by Bath Stone buttresses, each with 5 offsets. The 5-gabled airfield front has various openings in later block walls, the three sheds to the right (E) with full-width half height sliding doors. The N end has the two sheds to the E with full-width doors. Some glazing to roof slopes, but none of this is original.

INTERIOR: Plain interiors with painted walls and partitions, open steel trusses manufactured by Dorman and Long Ltd: the main walls and roof structure survive apparently as built.

HISTORY: The overall planning and design of this building relates to a very important transitional phase in hangar design - between the Training Depot Stations of 1918 and the larger-volume steel-roofed sheds more characteristic of the inter-war years. Hangars of this type have their genesis in Trenchard?s Inter-Allied bombing force of 1918, whose Handley-Page 0/400 bombers formed the cornerstone of their offensive capability: hangars were specially designed in order to admit these aircraft, which had 100-foot spans with folding wings. The construction of Handley-Page sheds comprised a large building programme, which would have continued into 1919 and which marked the genesis of a doctrine of offensive deterrence which underpinned the very existence of Britain's independent air force during the expansion of the RAF in the inter-war years. Two groups of sheds were built at Netheravon, one pair in 1920 at the extreme end of the eastern site (altered, and not included), and this larger range which stands close to the unique group of early aviators' barracks at Netheravon. They are unique in using Bath stone for external walls rather than brick comprises the only substantially complete example of its type (there being part of one at Tangmere in Surrey).

Netheravon is a uniquely well-preserved and historically important prototype air base of the pre-1914 period. With Upavon and Larkhill, it 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 was the first new squadron station selected and developed by the Royal Flying Corps' Military Wing, the second being Montrose in Scotland where original hangars (listed grade A) have survived. It was also the second new site built by the Royal Flying Corps, the first being the Central Flying School at Upavon which was established in June 1912. See description of The Officers' Mess (qv) for a more complete historical account of the site.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

495429

Legacy System:

LBS

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