Womens Land Army hostel

Women's Land Army hostel built in 1942, probably to a design by the Ministry of Works and Planning.

The building is constructed of brick and hollow-tile block walls with asbestos-sheet roofing, steel and timber windows, and concrete floors. It has a T-shaped plan, with a dining block aligned roughly north to south and a dormitory and ablutions block aligned approximately east to west, connected by a small link-block. A small outshut projects to the west of the dining block.

The hostel stands in a small field to the north of Back Lane and at the time of inspection was extremely overgrown. It is single-storey with duo-pitched roofs of profiled asbestos sheeting with widely-spaced ridges and flat valleys between. The walls are plain stretcher-bond brickwork with header-brick sills and concrete lintels to the window openings. Windows are generally of Crittall type in steel with three horizontal panes and a timber casement above, or non-opening with four horizontal panes.

The principal entrance, which accesses the dormitory and ablutions block, is on the north wall to the right of centre, with three brick buttresses to its right. The entrance is recessed with brick returns forming porch sides. The central door is half-glazed with three horizontal panes and vertical boarding below. Side panels flank the door, with horizontal lap-boarding below three horizontal panes aligned with the door glazing, topped and tailed with more slender horizontal panes. An overlight spans the whole entrance, with three lights matching the width of the door and side panels. To the right of the north wall is a small set-back coal bunker, and behind the roof ridge can be seen the north wall of the boiler-room tower. At the left is a small eastern outshut walled in flat asbestos sheeting. Between the windows of the dormitory block to the left of the entrance are wall vents at high level.

The eastern outshut spans the width of the north range with asbestos walling and a lean-to roof, the brick gable of the north range visible above. To the left and set well back are the east walls of the dining block and, further recessed, the flat-roofed link between the two principal blocks. The link has a single timber door with vertical boarding in its top panel, the bottom panel missing. The dining block has a small chimneystack towards its northern end and a round vent towards the centre of the ridge, with flashing for another to its north.

The southern gable is blind. Set back to the left is the south wall of the western outshut of the dining block, also blind and partially collapsed at the left, with the boiler-room tower visible above. Set back at the right is the south wall of the dormitory block, with windows and vents like the north wall.

The western wall is similar to the eastern. Central within the wall of the dining block is the blind wall of the western outshut, which contains a porch open to the north protecting the warden's or matron's entrance. At the left the link-block is obscured by a lean-to vehicle shelter attached to the south wall of the western end of the dormitory and ablutions block, its roof beginning to collapse. The western end of the ablutions block comprises the gable end with a small brick coal-bunker attached, and a square brick tower to the right of the ridge with a wooden door into the boiler room set slightly below ground with steps accessing it from the south.

The interior walls are unplastered and largely retain their wartime paint scheme of a blue or green dado defined by a dark dado line with cream above. The inner skins of external walls generally use bricks laid on their sides. Most walls have a low skirting of cement. The ceilings are mostly fibreboard painted white and fixed to the soffit of the purlins. Roof trusses are extremely simple, with scissor-braces tying the principal rafters together using bolts. Floors are concrete with no sign of having been painted. Most doors and architraves survive and most windows retain timber borders relating to blackout arrangements. Much of the electrical system and heating system survives. The original plan-form is mostly intact.

To the left of the northern entrance hall is a dormitory. The principal room is divided into four open-fronted bays to each side of a spine corridor, each partition aligned with a truss and having an end-post rising to the scissor-brace but appearing not to be fixed to it. The partitions only rise to eaves level and are constructed of square hollow-tile blocks laid on edge. Later whitewash is peeling to reveal the wartime paint beneath. Later dwarf walls and iron railings have been installed next to the original partitions. Wall vents are visible close to the window tops in each bay, surrounded by a rectangle of original paint not covered by the later whitewash, suggesting they originally had some sort of control cover removed after the conversion to pigsties. A heating pipe runs along the foot of each external wall. The fourth bay on the south side is fully enclosed with its side partition rising to the roof and a front wall also of hollow-tile block. This room has a later cement animal trough installed. The corresponding bay on the north side has the broken stubs of hollow-tile blocks keyed into the north wall, indicating that this bay was formerly two half-size bays.

The east end of the corridor is closed by a full-height cross wall with a central doorway. Beyond this is a single room to each side of the corridor. The door to the south room is painted with the word 'STAFF'. In these rooms the heating pipe rises up the inner face of the cross wall to ceiling height, where it runs along the outer wall and returns along the eastern end wall. This allows for an eastern external door which opens into the asbestos-clad outshut, which has a ledged and braced south door.

To the right of the entrance hall is the ablutions area. Brick walls to full height and eaves height define areas for baths, showers, washbasins and toilets. The wall to the toilets has been reduced in height and its doorway infilled to create an animal pen, and a railing has been installed across the washbasin area. Some plumbing survives and the heating pipe runs around the foot of the external walls. At the western end a full-height cross wall has an open doorway with rounded jambs leading to what was probably a laundry and drying room. Off this room is a small room containing a hot water tank, and in its south-western corner is the blind north wall of the boiler room, which is accessed externally.

The entrance hall leads to a flat-roofed link block. Unpainted areas of brickwork indicate that a former screen into the link has been removed. The link has a door in each side wall and a vertical-boarded door at the south end accessing the dining block.

The dining room is at the north end of this block, occupying the full width. The flue opening for a small fireplace is central in the east wall. In the south wall are the open servery hatch and the door to the kitchen. The kitchen retains a solid fuel heater with header and hot water tanks, but the location of the sinks is only legible through an unpainted area beneath the western windows and an associated water pipe. The kitchen windows are all timber. Other witness marks in the paint indicate former shelves and the location of the cooker.

Beyond the kitchen are a cross-corridor accessed from the matron's entrance and an axial corridor. Cubicles to the right of the axial corridor, probably larders and possibly including a sick-bay, are legible only by scars and paint witness marks on the walls and floor. The northern window in this corridor retains a roller for its blind. To the left of this corridor are the matron's three rooms, probably a sitting room, office and bedroom. The walls are of hollow-tile block except for a brick chimneystack central in the wall between the sitting room and office. Within the sitting room this projects and retains a tiled original fireplace with grate. The office had no fireplace and retains a roller blind.

The boiler-room tower retains two boilers, header tanks and a large rainwater tank reached by iron rungs set across the angle.