11, Offices, East Fortune Hospital

Building 11, Offices, East Fortune Hospital (Former Officer's Servants Quarters, Royal Naval Airship Station)

Built circa 1916, this is a single-storey officer's servants quarters forming part of the former Royal Naval Airship Station. The building is arranged in an H-plan with 11 bays distributed as 3-5-3 sections. It has a concrete plinth with an integral drainage channel and is constructed of white-painted corrugated iron, supported on pilotis (steel or concrete posts). The timber eaves course and bargeboards are also white-painted. An entrance door is positioned at the centre of the gable to the right.

The openings are predominantly set close to the eaves and are fitted with multi-pane metal-framed casement windows with top-hung hoppers, though some glazing is not original. The pitched roof is clad in white-painted corrugated iron and features ridge ventilators.

This building is one of the few remaining original structures from the significant First World War airship base at East Fortune. When the Admiralty established the Royal Naval Air Station in response to threats from German submarines and airships, the site was commissioned on 23 August 1916 and became one of five airship stations in Scotland and one of two principal stations designed to accommodate both non-rigid and rigid airships. Following the First World War, the station became notable as the base for the pioneering airship HMA R.34, which achieved the first East-West trans-Atlantic flight and the first return crossing by air.

The airship station closed in February 1920, and in 1922 the large airship sheds were dismantled. From 1921 onwards, part of the station was operated as a sanatorium until 1997, though it was requisitioned during the Second World War for RAF and WAAF training. The building is recorded in the Air Ministry Record Site Plan of 1945 as officer's quarters and subsequently served as a nursery and later as offices during the sanatorium period.

This is a rare surviving example of a corrugated iron military building from this period and remains largely unaltered. East Fortune is the most complete example of a purpose-built First World War airship base known to exist in the United Kingdom. Since 1975, the disused airfield and associated structures have operated as the National Museum of Flight, with the airfield itself designated as a scheduled monument.