Building 23 (Parachute Store)

STANTON ST QUINTIN

1384/0/10019 HULLAVINGTON BARRACKS 01-DEC-05 Building 23 (Parachute Store)

GV II Parachute store. 1935 - 6. A Bulloch, architectural advisor to the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings. Drawing No 1971/34. Bath stone ashlar on brickwork, profiled tile roofing.

PLAN: A small single storey rectangular building with hipped roof, entered through projecting porch at SW end.

EXTERIOR: Steel casement windows with horizontal bars in 2:3:3:2-lights to the road frontage, above these a wide dormer with 8 shallow lights. To the right a plank door in the small porch. The rear wall is plain, but above is a former identical to that on the front. Walls rise to a flush coped parapet all round.

INTERIOR: Exposed steel trusses.

HISTORY: A small but important supporting building, with the characteristic high level windows to allow for suspended parachutes to dry out. This 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. Buildings 20, 22, 23, 24 and 25 all face onto the avenue behind the hangar line, and that bisects the main SE-NW axis of the site.

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).