Cardington Number 1 Shed At Raf Cardington

Cardington No.1 Shed at RAF Cardington

This is an airship hangar built between 1916 and 1917. It was designed and built by A J Main and Co of Glasgow for the Admiralty under supervision of their Directorate of Works. The shed was enlarged in 1926–27 by the Cleveland Bridge and Engineering Co of Darlington, with the enlargement undertaken for the purpose of constructing and housing the R101 airship by the Royal Airship Works.

The structure measures 812 feet long, 275 feet wide and 180 feet high. It comprises 29 bays of steel framing, with side aisles and a huge central nave. The 1926–27 alterations included the addition of 4 bays, the insertion of new raking struts and the increase in size of the vertical columns to heighten the roof. The shed is clad in corrugated steel sheeting. Six stairways lead up to three roof catwalks or gantries, which were used in the construction of the R101. Enormous doors at the west end, moved by electric motors, open to the full height and width of the nave.

This is one of only three airship hangars in Britain to have survived from the period up to 1918, and the only in situ example of an airship hangar to have survived from that period. It stands adjacent to No 2 Shed. Their vast size and form provide uniquely important testimony to airship technology in Europe. The shed was the only example of an airship hangar from the period up to 1918 to survive in situ in Europe, particularly given the dismantling of airship sheds in Germany—the acknowledged leader in rigid airship technology in its formative phases—after 1919 and the demolition of other examples. It was originally constructed for the Admiralty as a 700-foot hangar for the accommodation of the airships R31 and R32.

Following Ramsey MacDonald's government's decision in 1924 to build two airships of 5,000,000 cubic foot capacity for imperial commerce as a mix of both public and private enterprise, the shed was enlarged to 812 feet in length and heightened by 35 feet to take the R101 between 1926 and 1927. No 2 Shed comprises a shed brought to the site from Pulham in Norfolk and then extended to its required length. Both sheds stand 180 feet high.

Following the R101 disaster of October 1930, when the airship crashed on its maiden voyage en route to India, killing 48 people including Sir Sefton Branker, the then Secretary of State for Air, the British government terminated its support for the airship programme under considerable economic pressure. The R100 was broken up inside No 1 Shed and sold for scrap in 1931. Cardington's fortunes revived after the formation of Balloon Command in November 1938, when it became the RAF's principal barrage balloon operations training centre. Airship sheds of the period up to the late 1930s are very rare survivals in Europe; there is only one example, for instance, in France on the Cotentin peninsula near Cherbourg from this period.