Stainforth Cottage, Calshot Activities Centre

Stainforth Cottage is a coastguard building, originally constructed around 1900. It was later converted to military use, serving as a first aid building after 1913. The building is constructed of painted brick with a gabled slate roof. It is two storeys high, featuring windows all set beneath cambered voussoir arches. The west gable displays a twelve-pane sash window above a flat-roofed porch. Eight-pane sashes are visible on the side elevations, with external steps leading to a first-floor door. The east gable has two twelve-pane sashes.

The interior is plain.

The building is historically linked to the nearby, highly significant group of II* listed seaplane hangars at Calshot, which date from 1913 to 1918. Calshot developed from a Henrician fort built in 1538 and, in 1913, became a Royal Naval Air Service base, initially comprising three seaplane sheds and accompanying coastguard cottages. This base was part of a chain encouraged by Winston Churchill, who himself made his first seaplane flight from Calshot in March 1913. During the First World War, the base played a key role in coastal defence and the development of aerial bombing. A narrow-gauge railway was constructed in 1917 to facilitate expansion.

Later, notably between 1927 and 1931, Calshot served as the base for the RAF High Speed Flight, crucial to the British team's victory in the September 1931 Schneider Trophy competition. The winning Supermarine S.6B seaplane, with its Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, was part of a design series by R J Mitchell that ultimately led to the Spitfire. Following the war, the site was used as a naval and navigational school and, during the Second World War, as a training and repair base for Sunderland flying boats. The station closed in 1961 and is now incorporated into a large Outdoor Adventure Centre.