22 C O N T E X T 1 2 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 1 JEREMY LAKE with WAYNE COCROFT and ROGER J C THOMAS Understanding Wiltshire’s military heritage Wiltshire, its landscape and its military camps have been the focus of a pilot project as part of the National Heritage Protection Plan’s activity on military sites and structures. Wiltshire’s landscape has been intensively used for military training and infrastructure from the late 19th century. Salisbury Plain is the largest training area in the UK, at some 38,000 hectares, and is one of the best-preserved archaeological landscapes in western Europe (McOmish et al 2002).The military use of the plain has helped to conserve chalk grassland habitats for a rich diversity of fauna and flora, as well as the visible archaeology of settlement and land use from the prehistoric period that has been destroyed elsewhere by intensive arable cultivation.The remains of practice trenches from both world wars and other features developed by the army across the plain are also of significance (Brown, G and Field, D 2007). Around the plain are military camps which have developed into small towns, including those ofTidworth, Larkhill and Bulford.The best survivals of the county’s barracks up to 1914 have been subject to a national study and are protected through listing (Douet 1998), such as Jellalabad barracks atTidworth, which is still in military use.There are also some examples of armouries and barracks buildings built after the Cardwell Reforms of the 1870s at Devizes, which have been successfully converted into housing. A national thematic survey, completed in 2003, promoting area protection and management guidance, identifiedWiltshire as having six of the 26 key sites in England which best reflect the development of military aviation from 1910 to 1945 (English Heritage 2003). These include the internationally significant group of early (1910–14) sites around Salisbury Plain including the hangars of 1910 at Larkill, the Royal Flying Corps’ Central Flying School at Upavon and the prototype flying base at nearby Netheravon. Old Sarum retains the most complete group of hangars and other technical buildings relating to a grass flying field of the first world war period. The Flying Training Station at Hullavington (now Buckley Barracks) is the station that most strongly exhibits the improved architectural quality of air bases developed under the post-1934 expansion of the RAF. It was selected in 1938 as one of a series of aircraft storage units for the storage of reserves for the operational front line. The airfield at Kemble retains a uniquely important range of the steel and concrete hangars designed for these aircraft storage units, which relate to contemporary hangar design elsewhere in Europe. Some important groupings of anti-invasion defences, including a nationally-important section of the 1940 General Head Quarters (GHQ) Stop Line along the RAF Lyneham originated in 1938-40 as a central hub of hangars and technical buildings, with temporary barracks, and an airfield ringed by dispersed hangars into the principal transport base of the post-1945 RAF.The size of the concrete hangar aprons, the associated terminal with its tower (to the right) and other buildings testify to the historic importance of Lyneham in transporting troops for overseas service and for disaster relief to the present day. It was announced in July 2011 that RAF Lyneham could be developed as a defence technical training centre from 2013. (Photo: © English Heritage NMR 26917-012)
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyMjA=