Building 25 (Central Heating Plant)

STANTON ST QUINTIN

1384/0/10027 HULLAVINGTON BARRACKS 01-DEC-05 Building 25 (Central Heating Plant)

GV II

Central heating plant. 1935-6. A Bulloch, architectural adviser to the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings. Drawing No 983/35. Bath stone ashlar on brick, concrete flat roofs.

PLAN: A tall thin tower incorporating water storage and flue is set off-centre to the 2-storey boiler room and ancillary spaces, set back from the tower front; fuel storage area behind, with oil tanks.

EXTERIOR: The tower is rectangular, with straight vertical sides stopped to a flat top; three of the faces contain a narrow vertical slot, stopped to a square head, but continued as a sunk panel above. Entrance though a deep-set arched doorway. Behind and attached to the tower the smaller stack, square on plan, is offset about 2m above the rood of the lower blocks. Windows are steel casements with horizontal bars, and slight drip-courses; two bays left of the tower include 2-light windows at each level, but a louvered opening above a door to the inner bay, and the return has 2 above one 3-storey unit with tall steel stack The rear has four 3-light clerestorey windows. Three large storage cylinders are contained in a low spillage wall.

INTERIOR: Not inspected, still in use for original function.

HISORY: This important functional building displays strong Art Deco influences, executed with the same care for overall impact and detail as the other buildings on this site. Buildings 20, 22, 23, 24 and 25 all face onto the avenue behind the hangar line, and that bisects the main SE-NW axis of the site.

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, se Buildings 59, 60 and 61 (The Officers' Mess).