Building 24 (Aircraft Repair Workshops)

This is a complex of aircraft repair workshops dating from 1935 to 1936, designed by A. Bulloch, who was the architectural advisor to the Air Ministry’s Directorate of Works and Buildings. The buildings are constructed from bath stone ashlar facing brick or blockwork, with profiled tile roofing and tall ashlar stacks.

The complex consists of two long, hipped sheds, arranged in parallel and designed for airframe and engine repair respectively. These are separated by a lower, mainly top-lit unit with a flat roof, which originally contained offices, stores, a blacksmith's shop, an acetylene welders' shop, and a machine shop.

The exterior features steel casement windows with horizontal bars, grouped under projecting lintel bands. The northwest front, facing the hangars, has full-height sliding/folding doors to each workshop shed, set forward one bay from the central section. This central section has a high, flush-coped parapet concealing roof lights, above a central door with an overlight, flanked by a single-light and two-light casement window on each side, all aligned under the lintel band. The returns to the southwest and northeast each have seven large, three-light casement windows, with the end lights separated from the central group by downpipes to hopper heads. The southeast front is similar to the northwest front, but the central, wider door lacks an overlight and the workshop bays project further, incorporating two-light casement windows to the inner returns.

Internally, original panelled and sliding doors remain. The main repair sheds feature steel roof trusses and plain concrete floors; one shed includes an inspection pit.

This aircraft repair building is part of a group of technical buildings at a nationally important site, notable for its completeness and the successful combination of functionality and aesthetics that characterized the early phase of the RAF's post-1934 expansion. The buildings face an avenue that bisects the site’s main southeast-northwest axis.

Hullavington, opened on June 6th, 1937, as a Flying Training Station, exemplifies the improved architectural quality of air bases developed during that period. Its strategic location also led to its selection in 1938 as one of several Aircraft Storage Units for vital reserves. Additional details on the site can be found in descriptions of Buildings 59, 60, and 61, which comprise the Officers' Mess.