BUILDING NO 90 (MAIN STORES)

BUILDING NO 90 (MAIN STORES), A 421 (SOUTH-EAST SIDE)

Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places

Overview

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1393038
Date first listed:: 01-Dec-2005
List Entry Name:: BUILDING NO 90 (MAIN STORES)
Statutory Address:: BUILDING NO 90 (MAIN STORES), A 421 (SOUTH-EAST SIDE)

The Missing Pieces Project

Share your view of unique places.

Add your contribution

Location

Location of this list entry and nearby places that are also listed. Use our map search to find more listed places.

There is a problem

Use of this mapping is subject to terms and conditions.

This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale.

What is the National Heritage List for England?

The National Heritage List for England is a unique register of our country's most significant historic buildings and sites. The places on the list are protected by law and most are not open to the public.

The list includes:

🏠 Buildings
🏰 Scheduled monuments
🌳 Parks and gardens
⚔️ Battlefields
⚓ Shipwrecks

Find out more about listing

Historic England Archive

Search over 1 million photographs and drawings from the 1850s to the present day using our images archive.

Find Photos

Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1393038
Date first listed:: 01-Dec-2005
List Entry Name:: BUILDING NO 90 (MAIN STORES)
Statutory Address 1:: BUILDING NO 90 (MAIN STORES), A 421 (SOUTH-EAST SIDE)

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 90 (MAIN STORES), A 421 (SOUTH-EAST SIDE)

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

County:: Oxfordshire
District:: Cherwell (District Authority)
Parish:: Launton
National Grid Reference:: SP 59135 24459

Details

LAUNTON

SP5924 A 421 (SOUTH-EAST SIDE) 1714/0/10060 RAF Bicester: Technical Site 01-DEC-05 Building No 90 (Main Stores)

GV II Main station stores. Dated 1926. By the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings, to drawing number 978/25. Stretcher bond brickwork, asbestos slate roofs.

PLAN: A rambling and complex building, all in one storey, with 2 long gabled sheds, linked at the right-hand end by a slightly higher hipped return and enclosing a narrow courtyard; attached to the rear (N) side a shorter group of 3 gabled units. The building was used for general storage of such items as clothing and furniture, and includes raised unloading bays to former railway to the right.

EXTERIOR: The main front has a series of steel casement windows to flush concrete lintels and stooled sills, 2 with louvres, and the two gables to the left return have similar casements, a blocked doorway, and a central plank door to the narrow courtyard. The right return had 3 wide openings on a raised platform, separated by piers with blue bull-nosed engineering bricks; the two outer bays have been filled with brickwork, and the loading platform cut back to the centre bay only. To each side a low plank door, that to the right with date-stone above. At the rear are 4 windows, and approx 4m run of the roof is felted only, without slates. The gabled ranges have wide doorways at each end, and a plain N front. The long roof slopes to the main range have continuous patent glazing.

INTERIOR: Plain internal spaces, with roof structure in steel trusses on interior brick piers; half-glazed sliding doors to workshops; panelled doors to offices.

HISTORY: The Technical Site at Bicester, separated from the Domestic Site, still has many of the original buildings, mostly of 1926 but with others added during successive phases of the 1930's Expansion Period. This building is prominently sited on the main axial route that bisects the technical site and leads to the hangars and flying field. It is located opposite the MT sheds (qv), and as one of first phase of buildings on this uniquely important site comprises an unusually unaltered example of one of the first permanent designs for Britain's independent air force.

Bicester is the best-preserved of the bomber bases constructed as the principal arm of Sir Hugh Trenchard's expansion of the RAF from 1923, which was based on the philosophy of offensive deterrence. It retains, better than any other military airbase in Britain, the layout and fabric relating to both pre-1930s military aviation and the development of Britain's strategic bomber force - and the manner in which its expansion reflected domestic political pressures as well as events on the world stage - in the period up to 1939. It was this policy of offensive deterrence that essentially dominated British air power and the RAF's existence as an independent arm of the military in the inter-war period, and continued to determine its shape and direction in the Second World War and afterwards during the Cold War. The grass flying field still survives with its 1939 boundaries largely intact, bounded by a group of bomb stores built in 1938/9 and airfield defences built in the early stages of the Second World War. For much of the Second World War RAF Bicester functioned as an Operational Training Unit, training Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders as well as British air crews for service in Bomber Command. These OTUs, of which Bicester now forms the premier surviving example, fulfilled the critical requirement of enabling bomber crews - once individual members had trained in flying, bombing, gunnery and navigation - to form and train as units. For further historical details see Buildings Nos 79 and 137 (Type 'A' Hangars).

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:: 497526
Legacy System:: LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Dobinson, C, Airfield Themes, (1997)
Francis, P, British Military Airfield Architecture From Airships To The Jet Age, (1996)
Francis, P , RAF Bicester, (1996)

Legal

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