Buildings Nos 15 And 17

Offices and stores, 1913, designed by the War Office's Directorate of Fortifications and Works.

These two small gabled buildings are constructed with softwood framing, asbestos-cement panel facings and linings, with joints covered in painted softwood battens. They sit on concrete levelling slabs with a plinth offset, and are roofed with asbestos-cement diagonal slating.

Building 15 has three wide-spaced sash windows to the front set within a grid of vertical and horizontal battens framing the openings, with sole plate, sill and head bands. It has a panelled door with overlight near each end. To the right of the front door is a run of window at eaves level, above three small contiguous lights, and there is a ridge stack here. The rear elevation has 12-pane sashes, including one paired example, and the east gable has one small light.

Building 17 has two 12-pane sashes to the front, a door with overlight to the left, and a further door under an attached porch to the right. Each gable has two sashes, and the rear has a 12-paned sash at each end. It has a central brick ridge stack with three flues.

Both buildings are aligned with the Sergeants' Mess to their right, facing across a parade ground towards the airfield. Each has a simple plan with division into two or three rooms. They follow the same design philosophy as the Officers' and Airmen's accommodation groups located to the west and east respectively.

These buildings are important in linking visually and historically the two major accommodation groups, and they represent important survivals within an area unified by consistent design approach. Together with Upavon and Larkhill, Netheravon comprises one of three sites around the Army training ground at Salisbury Plain relating to the crucial formative phase in the development of military aviation in Europe prior to the First World War. The layout of pre-1914 buildings on the domestic site has been retained intact, with the principles of the base layout—combining topography and its historical context as a prototype military air base—forming the template for all subsequent phases of rebuilding and development. The domestic site has survived in a complete state of preservation. It contains the best-preserved suite of barracks buildings of any of the 301 bases occupied by the RAF in November 1918. These buildings were modelled on standard types of Victorian cavalry barracks. No sites of this degree of preservation survive from any other combatant nation of the First World War, with the notable exception of the combined mess and hangar at Schleissheim near Munich, established in 1912 as the base of the Royal Bavarian Flying Corps.