3 Former World War I Aircraft Hangars At Old Sarum Airfield

Three former First World War aircraft hangars at Old Sarum Airfield, comprising one single and two paired storage sheds. Designed in 1917 and built in 1918.

The hangars are constructed with brick piers, curtain walls and gantries, rendered externally, with Belfast roof trusses and asphalt roof covering. Each hangar contains 16 bays. The two paired hangars (Sheds 1 and 3) share a central row of brick columns and are flanked by low subsidiary workshops and storage annexes on their long sides. The single-span hangar was built for the Aircraft Repair Section and has a detached workshop to the rear. The entire group extends approximately 250 metres east to west, surrounded by large concrete manoeuvring areas and aprons around the entrances and airfield side.

The windows are original painted steel casements, arranged as a high clerestory along the long sides of each hangar in 14 of the 16 bays. They are doubled 24-pane units with 4-pane pivoted lights in each bay. The infill walling above and below is of half-brick thickness. Broad asbestos sheet cladding has been added to the south (airfield) side of each hangar. Each hangar has full-width, full-height sliding doors suspended from overhead gearing and protected by deep projecting weathering. Six doors per hangar slide to ground rails into external brick gantries, each gantry comprising three pairs of piers linked at the head by segmental brick diaphragm arches. Between the doors of the paired hangars stands a brick pier with a deep central recess carrying a large rainwater downpipe. Above the door track is a flat segmental pediment to each shed with close-set vertical joint divisions in metal cladding and a wide central ventilation louvre. The single-storey ancillary spaces along the long sides have near-flat felted roofs weathered to the curtain walls and buttresses, constructed in brick with 9-pane casements, the upper 6 panes horizontally pivot-hung. Sheds 1 and 3 each have a 14-bay range to the south with two entrances in the north wall. Shed 2 has a 7-bay range to the south with a boiler room (flue cropped at eaves) and two separate single-bay units, while two gabled sheds have been added on the north side, parallel with the main wall. All roofs incorporate a continuous gabled ridge lantern in patent glazing, probably original and documented in a 1931 photograph.

Internally, the paired sheds contain a central row of brick piers joined longitudinally by diaphragm walls supporting low segmental arches. The Belfast trusses are formed from small-section timbers with top and bottom chords sandwiching a close mesh of cross-bracing. At the supports, further shear strengthening is provided by diagonal boarded bracing, with raking struts rising from brick corbelling near the pier heads, which continue through to the eaves. Continuous runs of longitudinal cross-bracing occur in the vertical plane, with additional horizontal bracing to the bottom chord in the end bays. The trusses carry small purlins and closely-spaced rafters with continuous diagonal boarding sheathing.

Old Sarum retains one of the most complete groups of technical buildings representative of a First World War Training Depot Station, comparable only to surviving examples at Duxford in Cambridgeshire and Leuchars in Scotland. Uniquely among key surviving sites of the period up to 1918, it retains its grass flying field without the perimeter tracks and later interventions characteristic of post-1938 development. Its location near Salisbury Plain connects it to three important early military aviation sites: Larkhill, Upavon and Netheravon. The airfield was one of 63 Training Depot Stations operational in November 1918. Each such station comprised three flying units, each with a paired general service shed and repair hangar; Old Sarum's single repair hangar is the only surviving example of this type. Specialist buildings including carpenters' shops, dope shops, engine repair shops and technical and plane stores characterised these stations.

In 1917 the War Office purchased land at Ford Farm for airfield development. The base was subsequently renamed Old Sarum (after the nearby hillfort, medieval royal castle and cathedral). By September 1918 seven hangars (one single repair hangar and three paired hangars), motor transport sheds and various workshops had been constructed, with personnel initially accommodated in tents. Originally used as a Training Depot Station for day bombing, Old Sarum's proximity to army training areas on Salisbury Plain secured its retention after 1919 for the School of Army Co-Operation, which conducted courses for Army and RAF observers and pilots. Blenheims were operated from the base by the end of the 1930s. Foreign visitors included the German Air Attache and, in 1939, both the Italian Air Attache and the Chief Instructor of the Italian School of Army Co-Operation. During the first four years of the Second World War, the base's principal function was the formation and training of Air Observation Units, though it was also used by Special Operations Executive for airdrops into France and briefly by the Royal Canadian Air Force (110 Squadron) for anti-invasion coast patrols. In February 1944 the hangars were converted for housing vehicles specially prepared for D-Day operations. After 1947 Old Sarum became the School of Land/Air Warfare, attended mainly by senior officers of all three services. The base closed as a military installation in 1979; much of the immediate area has since been redeveloped as an industrial estate, though club flying continues. The most westerly of the three paired hangars was destroyed by fire in 1986.