BUILDING NO 38A (HANDLEY PAGE HANGARS)

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Overview

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1391480
Date first listed:: 01-Dec-2005
List Entry Name:: BUILDING NO 38A (HANDLEY PAGE HANGARS)
Statutory Address:: BUILDING NO 38A (HANDLEY PAGE HANGARS)

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Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1391480
Date first listed:: 01-Dec-2005
List Entry Name:: BUILDING NO 38A (HANDLEY PAGE HANGARS)
Statutory Address 1:: BUILDING NO 38A (HANDLEY PAGE HANGARS)

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

Location

Statutory Address:: BUILDING NO 38A (HANDLEY PAGE HANGARS)

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

District:: Wiltshire (Unitary Authority)
Parish:: Figheldean
National Grid Reference:: SU 15802 48995

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

Legal

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.