Buildings 73 And 74

Military transport garages and workshops dating from 1917, designed by the War Office's Directorate of Fortifications and Works (Drawing No 289/17).

The buildings form a pair of parallel twelve-bay sheds separated by a broad central concrete manoeuvring space. Both ranges have painted brickwork walls and piers supporting low-pitched slate roofs on steel trusses. Each shed is arranged as a series of continuous garages with full-width and full-height roller-shutter doors divided by square piers to a plain eaves. The first two bays from the west end of Building 74, and the first bay from the east end of Building 73, have enclosed fronts providing office or stores and workshop spaces. Both sheds are gabled at each end and are not linked by walls.

The two ranges are virtually identical in their detailing. Facing the yard, each vehicle bay has a full-width overhead roller-shutter with square dividing piers. The outer and end walls are plain, except the east gable of Building 73, which contains three steel twelve-pane casements. Building 73 has its first bay filled with a brick partition wall containing a door and window. Building 74's bays 11 and 12 are filled with horizontal boarding to timber framing, an early plank door with overlight, and three two-light small-pane casements. Patent-glazing ridge-lighting runs across bays 10 to 12 in Building 73 and bays 6, 8, and 9 in Building 74.

These buildings are representative of standardised military airfield garage designs. They remain from the original 1917 layout of Duxford airfield, part of the technical buildings grouped south of the public through-road (now the A505). They survive with minimum external alteration and exemplify the basic designs employed in the early years of military aviation. They are historically important as part of the complete Training Depot Station at Duxford—the most intact First World War airfield group in Britain. Training Depot Stations, initiated in 1917, formed the largest airfield construction programme of the First World War, with 63 built by November 1918. Each comprised three flying units with coupled general service sheds and one repair section hangar, supplemented by specialist buildings including carpenters' shops, dope and engine repair shops, and technical and plane stores. These two ranges are closely associated with the main hangar group immediately to the south.