C O N T E X T 1 2 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 1 23 Kennet and Avon Canal, are threaded across the county’s landscape.Wiltshire’s location and limestone geology also offered opportunities for the development of large munitions stores for all three services, which at Corsham and Chilmark were adapted from earlier underground quarries. During the Cold War, Spring Quarry at Corshamwas developed as the secret Central Government War Headquarters, which in the event of nuclear war would become the seat of national government. Elsewhere in the county are local authority emergency control centres and at Chilmark a 1980s regional government headquarters. Wiltshire is also home to two of the country’s most important defence research establishments. Since the first world war, Porton Down has been synonymous with research into chemical and biological weapons. From 1939, Boscombe Down has been the testing ground for nearly all the UK’s military aircraft, and many other aspects of aeronautical research. The Wiltshire Pilot project was developed at the beginning of 2011 as part of the National Heritage Protection Plan’s activity area on military sites and structures. It was designed to test a methodology for rapid survey and assessment of selected disposal sites that might be applied at a national level. The county was chosen for the pilot study area as it represents one of the greatest concentration of disposals in a single county, and a range of site types that posed very different challenges for assessment, designation and planning. Initially, existing information on these sites was collated, including current and selected historic mapping, and records held on English Heritage’s AMIE database. The former RAF station at Netheravon is a key site in the history of British military aviation. Begun in 1912, it is the most complete of the sites that date from the crucial formative phase in the development of military aviation in Europe, which occurred prior to the first world war. The domestic site retains a remarkably well-preserved group of single-storey barracks and mess buildings dating from 1913–14, now listed at Grades II and II*. The grass airfield remains intact, its historic significance sustained by its continued use for army flying and its significance as a rare surviving habitat for fauna and flora in Salisbury Plain. The landscape also retains earthworks and other features of medieval and earlier (mostly prehistoric) date that extend into the surrounding fields and downland.The photograph shows the flying field with the hangars and technical buildings in the foreground, looking towards the airmen’s barracks and officer’s chalets and mess. (Photo: © English Heritage NMR 24869-012) Hullavington, which opened in 1937 as a flying training station, is in every respect the 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 frontline. It is a conservation area. The hangars, officers’ mess and other buildings were listed at Grade II – and the site’s national significance clearly identified – as a result of the thematic survey of military aviation sites.The photograph shows the hangars, which are placed across the central axis of the main technical and domestic site, with the barracks square to the rear and the officers’ mess to the top right. (Photo: © English Heritage NMR 26903-006)
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyMjA=