Details
ST PAUL MALMESBURY WITHOUT
1360/0/10013 HULLAVINGTON BARRACKS
01-DEC-05 Buildings 3, 6 and 7 ('C' Type Hangars)
GV II
Two aircraft storage sheds type C, and one repair shed. 1935 - 6. A Bulloch, architectural adviser to the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings, Drawings No 4637/35 (3), 2990/36 (6) and 4637/36 (7). Bath stone ashlar on concrete or block, steel stanchions and roof framing, asbestos slate roofs.
PLAN: The two storage hangars are identical type 'C' sheds, with minor variations in the ancillary accommodation, and the smaller repair shed is of similar type, but of lesser span and length with workshop at rear. Each retains the original open hangar space. Annexes along side-walls containing crew room, locker room, armament, ground equipment rooms, offices and other workshop accommodation.
EXTERIOR: Buildings 3 and 7 are in 12 bays. At each end are 6 full-height steel doors with paired full-width lights at the top, to overhead sliding gear, but no gantries; doors have been modified by the insertion of a central fixed panel and small opening. Above the doors is a deep apron clad in asbestos slate, and at each end there is a one bay return with parapet taken to this same height; the remaining 10 bays have a lower parapet, above a continuous range of paired lights in 4 x 4 large panes, protected externally by (later) translucent corrugated sheeting. Bays 4, 6, 7 and 9 contain a vertical ventilating louvre, with a similar louvre in each of the tall lights to the end bays. The parapets conceal the series of hipped roofs. On the field side of each hangar is a low, flat-roofed single-storey annex, with 2 and 3-light steel casements with horizontal bars, the windows grouped under lintel bands, and central doorways. Building 3 has a small 4-bay unit on the opposite side, and Building 7, a 1-bay range.
The repair shed (Building 6) is similar in overall format, but in 8 bays, and with 4 doors to each end, with paired lights at the top, and not modified. External detailing is similar, but the main lights each long side have 6-pane vertical external clear screens, under a continuous run of externally fixed spot-lights. On the field side is a 6-bay annex, with steel casements, but the inner side has a full-height 2-bay central 'transept', with large end light above doors; to its left is a low flat-roofed unit of the same depth in 4 bays, and to the right a deep projecting flat-roofed workshop with continuous louvred roof ventilator. There is a large square stack to the internal junction between 'transept' and main shed.
INTERIOR: The 'C' sheds retain the original steel roof structure: the principal trusses, set to the right-lines of the multiple roofs, are formed from paired small channel connected by flat zig-zag bracing, or some flat plating, with main bracing of flats or angles, and a complex of cross members at two levels carried to horizontal chords at mid bay; lateral support and bracing is provided in the outer wall planes above the window strip. The end bays have wind-bracing in the horizontal plane at door-head height. The roof slopes have been underlined with fibre-board insulation.
HISTORY: The Type C, of which 146 sheds were built on 72 sites, was the standard hangar of the post-1934 expansion scheme: it was designed with a span of 150 feet (45.7m) and a length of 300 feet (91.4m). The first designs by Bulloch displayed an assured handling of the functional and aesthetic challenges that these large sheds posed, Moderne influences being particularly strong in the handling of the end bays and the massing of the workshop blocks to the rear of the repair hangar. These hangars, by virtue of their degree of preservation and the use of local limestone, present themselves as the finest architectural assemblage of aircraft hangars of the inter-war period, which occupy a prominent and critical place in the planning of this nationally-important site. They are set across the NW edge of the main buildings group, centred to the main axis through the parade ground, water tower, and control tower.
Hullavington, which opened on June 6th 1937 as a Flying Training Station, is in every respect the key station most strongly representative of the improved architectural quality characteristic of the air bases developed under the post-1934 expansion of the RAF. Its position in the west of England with other training and maintenance bases also prompted its selection in 1938 as one of series of Aircraft Storage Units for the storage of vital reserves destined for the operational front-line. For further details on the site, see Buildings 59, 60 and 61 (The Officers' Mess).
