Building 79 (Mt Group)

ST PAUL MALMESBURY WITHOUT

1360/0/10020 HULLAVINGTON BARRACKS 01-DEC-05 Building 79 (MT Group)

GV II Aircraft workshops. 1935 - 6. A Bulloch, architectural advisor to the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings. Drawing No 2048/34. Bath stone ashlar on brick or blockwork, profiled tile roofing and tall square stack.

PLAN: Two long hipped service sheds in parallel (for airframes and engines), flanking a lower mainly top-lit flat-roofed unit containing offices, stores and Instrument Repair Shop.

EXTERIOR: Steel casement windows with horizontal bars, grouped under projecting lintel-bands. The NW front, towards the hangars (qqv), has full height sliding/folding doors to each shed, set forward one bay from the centre section. This has a high flush-coped parapet concealing roof lights, above a central door with overlight, flanked by a single and 2-light casement each side, and all to a lintel band. The returns to SW and NE each have 7 large 3-light casements, the end lights separated from the centre group by downpipes to hopper-heads. The SE front is similar to the NW front, but the central door has been partially blocked and there is an additional doorway to its left; the workshop bays project further with 2-light casements on the inner returns.

INTERIOR: Original panelled and sliding doors. The main repair sheds have steel roof trusses and plain concrete floor, one with inspection pit.

HISTORY: This aircraft repair building 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).