Building 20 (Main Stores)

Details

1359/0/10034
HULLAVINGTON
HULLAVINGTON BARRACKS
Building 20 (Main Stores)

GV II

Main Stores building. 1935-6. A Bulloch, architectural adviser to the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings. Drawing No 2057/34. Bath stone ashlar on brick walls, profiled tile roofing.

PLAN: A large square block, all in one-storey. A hipped U-plan unit encloses, a lower flatroofed area with a small central courtyard, and centred on the airfield side a tall garage or store, slightly projecting forward, and with plain hipped roof on an eaves - the remainder of the buildings with parapets.

EXTERIOR: There is a very slight plinth throughout, hipped roofs are set to high .parapets with flush coping, and steel casement windows, generally grouped under a lintel course, all have horizontal bars. The loading front (SE) has a central section with three wide openings to a loading platform, now blocked in brickwork, but 2 retaining narrow overlights, and one with 3-light inserted casement, flanked each side by a narrow single light. These under a parapet raised above the remainder. To each side a large 3-light flanked by narrow single lights, all to a common lintel course. The right (SW) return has 11 tall lights to a common lintel course, and a plank door to the left; the left return (NE) has seven 2-lights, flanked by a single light each end. The pavilion returns to these wings have the same triple window layout as the front. The NW front has a lofty hipped block, without parapets, with a full height opening without doors; this is connected to the side wings by low annexes each side, each with a 3-light casement and a plank door.

INTERIOR: exposed steel trusses; original joinery with panelled and sliding doors throughout.

HISTORY: This highly distinctive building is one of a group of technical buildings at this nationally important site that are both substantially complete - with original windows and other fitments - and which display the successful fusion of functional and aesthetic requirements that distinguished the early phase of the post-1934 expansion of the RAF. Buildings 20, 22, 23, 24 and 25 all face onto the avenue behind the hangar line, and that bisects the main SE-NW axis of the site.
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).

End of official list entry

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