Building Nos 129, 130 And 131 (Motor Transport Sheds)

Three ranges of motor transport sheds at RAF Bicester. Buildings 129 and 131 date from 1927, designed to drawing numbers 2033-5/26. Building 130 dates from 1937, designed to drawing number 6225/37. All were designed by the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings. They are constructed with steel framing and in-situ cast concrete or brick walling, with diagonal asbestos-cement slate roofs.

The two parallel ranges, 129 and 131, face a wide concrete manoeuvring apron and are complemented by the later shed 130 to form a three-sided yard. Building 129 contains six low bays and three higher bays on the left-hand unit, linked to a later workshop adjacent to the avenue (not included in the listing). Building 131 to the right has six high bays with two lower bays on the left, and workshops to the right, featuring a broad-span roof to an outer end gable. Building 130 has four large part-glazed timber doors hung to bold bull-nosed concrete piers, below a continuous lintel band, with horizontal clerestory windows above. The plain gable ends of Building 130 contrast with its brick rear wall containing four large vertical steel casements.

The inner fronts of Buildings 129 and 131 have steel H-stanchions tied back to similar verticals housing full-width roller shutters to each garage, though one unit in 131 has later external sliding doors. Gable and rear walls are normally in steel frame set flush to cast concrete walls, but the higher bays of Building 129 have Flemish bond brickwork gables and rear wall, including two external piers to the outer gable end. The broad-span section has cast concrete walling with various openings. In front of the dividing stanchions between garages is a protective concrete block set to the paving.

Internally, steel trusses span between steel stanchions or brick piers.

The Technical Site at Bicester, separated from the Domestic Site, retains many original buildings, mostly from 1926 with others added during successive phases of the 1930s Expansion Period. This group is an unusually complete surviving example of motor transport facilities, a key function on military air bases. The sheds are entered from the main avenue and are sited opposite the Station Stores, forming part of a uniquely important site. Bicester is the best-preserved of the bomber bases constructed as the principal arm of Sir Hugh Trenchard's expansion of the RAF from 1923, which was based on the philosophy of offensive deterrence. It retains, better than any other military airbase in Britain, the layout and fabric relating to both pre-1930s military aviation and the development of Britain's strategic bomber force in the period up to 1939. For much of the Second World War RAF Bicester functioned as an Operational Training Unit, training Canadian, Australian and New Zealand as well as British air crews for service in Bomber Command. The grass flying field still survives with its 1939 boundaries largely intact, bounded by a group of bomb stores built in 1938-39 and airfield defences built in the early stages of the Second World War.