York Cottage

Details

UPAVON

1182/0/10005 A 342 01-DEC-05 Upavon Camp, Trenchard Lines (North side) York Cottage

GV II Officers' accommodation block. 1913, designed by the War Office's Directorate of Fortifications and Works. Painted concrete blockwork, asbestos-cement, diagonal slate roof.

PLAN: A symmetrical one-storey T-plan, with broad front range containing bedrooms, and deep rear service wing. Central entrance lobby to hall and transverse to rear corridor to 2 bedrooms each side; service wing includes a small kitchen.

EXTERIOR: Windows wooden glazing-bar sash with deep stooled stone sills. Pair of small-pane glazed and panelled doors under a small flat canopy immediately below eaves, and on flight of 5 concrete steps. To each side a 12-pane, and a tripartite 4:8:4-pane sash. The left return has a single 12-pane, and on the rear a single 12-pane adjacent to the service wing, which has 3 sashes and a plain outer end. The right return has a 6-pane, then an added flat-roofed plant room and a fenced yard covering the wing, with one sash visible. Roofs are hipped with a small box eaves, and there are small brick ridge stacks near each hipped end and to the rear wing.

INTERIOR: retains original joinery, including panelled doors and cupboards.

HISTORY: This building is the least altered externally of its type on the base, and groups with the Officers' Mess (qv) immediately adjacent to its west. It is characteristic of the provision for officers at this time, in a series of small grouped pavilions rather than a larger block, and is identical in its plan form to the officers' chalets built in 1913 at Netheravon to the south.

Upavon 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. The selection of Upavon was a direct result of the Committee for Imperial Defence's decision to unify the army and naval arms of British military aviation within one organisation. Opened in June 1912 - one month after the formation of the Royal Flying Corps - Upavon was established as the Central Flying School (CFS) for the RFC, under Capt. Godfrey Paine RN; the temporary buildings of 1912 were replaced from 1913, as pupil numbers and the demand for improved accommodation rose. The CFS ran an advanced course for military purposes, as pilots had already completed the elementary stage before arriving here. Upavon, like the nearby sites of Larkhill and Netheravon, offered an ideal hill-top position for military flying, close to the army training areas on Salisbury Plain. The first pilot's certificate issued at the end of the first training course was to Captain (Brevet Major) Hugh Trenchard, who by January 1918 had risen to the post of Assistant Commander at Upavon and went on to become the RAF's first Chief of Air Staff.

Upavon remained the Central Flying School until 1924, when its location at the core of the Wessex group led to its replacement by Wittering in Lincolnshire. This function was re-established after a brief period as a Fleet Air Arm shore base in 1935, by which time a large building programme was underway. It became a Flying Training School from 1942 to 1945, and a transport base from 1946: 38 Group was responsible for organising the Berlin Airlift from here.
The varied buildings reflect the complex history of the base, the most significant part of which is the domestic camp located on the north side of the A343. The precise direction of its future development as the Central Flying School was not planned at the outset, its construction in permanent fabric waiting for two years after its opening. The buildings of 1914 were all designed by the War Office's Directorate of Fortifications and Works, the most notable of these being the Officers' Mess (Building 21), the airmen's barracks and officers' quarters planned after those at Netheravon and Buildings 68, 70 and 110.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

497691

Legacy System:

LBS

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