Building 82 (Canteen), Aircraft Storage Unit Site

ST PAUL MALMESBURY WITHOUT

1360/0/10014 HULLAVINGTON BARRACKS 01-DEC-05 Building 82 (Canteen), Aircraft Storag e Unit site

GV II Former canteen, now in use as nursery. 1938. Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings. Drawing No 2876/37. Bath stone ashlar on brick, profiled tile roof covering.

PLAN: A long single-storey hipped block with symmetrical front, deep rear 'T' arm with kitchen, and side wings.

EXTERIOR: All windows steel casements with horizontal bars. Front range has central pair of panelled doors on 2 steps, set back between rounded pilasters and with a small canopy. Each side are 2-light windows, grouped 1:4:1, the central group under a lintel-band, and separated by 4 downpipes to hopper-heads. The returned ends have 1:3 casements similarly treated, with 2 downpipes. All with high flush coped parapet. The rear retains the original ashlar stack, and there is a later very large brick stack.

INTERIOR: Panelled doors.

HISTORY: This canteen 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. It also comprises part of a remarkably complete technical group, established to the N of the main group on this base for the purpose of providing repair and administration facilities to the Aircraft Storage Unit.

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).