Building No 38A (Handley Page Hangars)

Building No 38A (Handley Page Hangars)

A linked range of five hangars built in 1918, probably designed by Lieutenant J.G.N. Clift of the Royal Engineers, to house Handley Page 0/400 bombers. The building features Bath stone outer walls and buttresses with brickwork inner walls and partitions, supporting steel trusses that carry corrugated aluminium roofing.

Each of the five clear-span sheds measures 45.4 by 13.4 metres (149 feet by 44 feet) with a clear height of 7.3 metres (24 feet). A central cross-wall divides each shed into two sections. Originally, each shed had full-width Essavian folding doors at both ends, though these have since been replaced with various modified openings in blockwork walls at the airfield end and blockwork walls (some with buttresses) at the north end.

The exterior walls at either end of the range are arranged in 12 bays constructed in standard-sized Bath stone blocks, stabilised by Bath stone buttresses each with five offsets. The five-gabled airfield-facing front incorporates various openings in later blockwork walls; the three sheds to the east have full-width half-height sliding doors. The two eastern sheds at the north end also have full-width doors. Some glazing has been added to the roof slopes, though none of this is original.

The interiors are plain, with painted walls and partitions. The open steel trusses, manufactured by Dorman and Long Ltd, survive apparently as originally constructed, as do the main walls and roof structure.

This building represents an important transitional phase in hangar design between the Training Depot Stations of 1918 and the larger volume steel-roofed sheds characteristic of the inter-war years. Hangars of this type originated in Trenchard's Inter-Allied bombing force of 1918, established to operate Handley-Page 0/400 bombers with their distinctive 100-foot wing spans and folding wings. The construction of Handley-Page sheds formed a large building programme continuing into 1919 and marked the genesis of a doctrine of offensive deterrence that underpinned the existence of Britain's independent air force during the RAF's inter-war expansion.

Two groups of such sheds were built at Netheravon: one pair in 1920 at the extreme eastern end of the site (now altered and not listed), and this larger range, which stands near the unique group of early aviators' barracks at Netheravon. These sheds are distinctive in their use of Bath stone for external walls rather than brick, and this range comprises the only substantially complete example of its type, with only a partial example surviving at Tangmere in Surrey.

Netheravon is a uniquely well-preserved and historically important prototype air base of the pre-1914 period. Together with Upavon and Larkhill, it is one of three sites around the Army training ground on Salisbury Plain that relate to the crucial formative phase in the development of military aviation in Europe before the First World War. It was the first new squadron station selected and developed by the Royal Flying Corps' Military Wing (the second being Montrose in Scotland, which retains Grade A listed original hangars), and also the second new site built by the Royal Flying Corps, following the Central Flying School at Upavon, established in June 1912.