Loading Bay, Garage, East Fortune Hospital

Loading Bay and Garage, East Fortune Hospital

A tall single-storey building dating to circa 1916, comprising a three-gabled by five-bay vehicle loading bay and stores. The central gable is notably taller and wider than its flanking gables. The structure stands on a concrete plinth with integral drainage channel and brick base course. The walls are clad in white-painted corrugated iron, with painted timber eaves course and bargeboards. Large corrugated iron two-leaf sliding doors occupy the centre of both the north and south elevations. Single-storey two-bay lean-tos extend to the flanking bays of the north (principal) elevation.

Windows are metal-framed with nine panes and top-hung hopper openings. The roof is of white-painted corrugated iron with large rooflights to the pitched roof at the centre and ridge ventilators.

Internally, the building is supported by steel roof trusses resting on steel I-beams and columns, with painted vertical timber-boarded lining to the lean-tos. The building is largely unaltered and represents a rare surviving example of a corrugated iron military building of this period. A 1945 site plan records the building as a gym, but it returned to its original function following the Second World War.

This former garage is one of the few remaining original buildings from the significant former First World War airship base at East Fortune, where the pioneering airship HMA R.34 was launched to make the first East-West trans-Atlantic flight and the first return crossing by air. East Fortune is the most complete example of a purpose-built First World War airship base known to exist in the United Kingdom.

The Royal Naval Air Station was established in September 1915 and officially commissioned on 23 August 1916 when the first airship arrived. It was strategically positioned for coastal patrols of the east coast and the Firth of Forth, part of a network of home defence airfields established by the Admiralty along the North Sea coastline to protect east coast shipping from German submarines and Zeppelins. East Fortune was one of five airship stations in Scotland and, with Longside in Aberdeenshire, was one of the two principal stations designed to accommodate both the larger Coastal and North Sea types of non-rigid airships and rigid airships. The rigid airship shed was constructed in the winter of 1916–1917, after which the station expanded to include additional airship hangars and replacement of wooden barracks in brick.

The airship station closed on 4 February 1920, and in 1922 the large airship sheds were dismantled. In 1921 a portion of the airship station was sold and operated as a sanatorium until 1997, though it was temporarily requisitioned during the Second World War and operated as part of the RAF and WAAF major training base. The First World War brick barracks were converted into hospital wards, and additional brick buildings such as a boiler house, laundry, canteen and meeting hall were constructed. The First World War barracks and interwar sanatorium buildings still exist on the site.

The building is part of a group listing that includes the East Fortune Hospital Welfare Office, East Fortune Hospital Offices, East Fortune Hospital Nursing Administration Block, East Fortune Hospital Stores, East Fortune Hospital Driver's Office, and East Fortune Hospital Recreation Hall.

The site is situated to the north of the disused East Fortune airfield, which is a scheduled monument. Since 1975 the airfield and associated structures have operated as the National Museum of Flight.