20 C O N T E X T 1 3 7 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 4 Domestic and technical buildings have survived from the first of the sites developed by the Royal Flying Corps (RFC, founded 1912), for officer training at Upavon and the prototype squadron base at Netheravon, sited close to the army’s training areas on Salisbury Plain, and a remarkable suite of hangars dating from 1913 at Montrose, close to the naval base at Rosyth in Scotland. Work had already begun on a chain of coastal stations for the separate Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) for working with the Fleet in HomeWaters. These stations formed the core sites fromwhich British aircraft were deployed for service overseas. They were also the hub of the subsequent expansion of British air power throughout the first world war. The RFC and RNAS continued on separate paths for much of the first world war, during which there was increasing recognition of the potential of air power as an independent arm of the armed forces. The Smuts report, compiled in the aftermath of the Gotha bomber raids on coastal towns in Kent and then London in the summer of 1917, paved the way for the unification of both services into the Royal Air Force in April 1918, and the establishment of a unified command structure, with intercept squadrons and anti-aircraft guns placed outside London. The RAF’s first chief of air staff, General Sir Hugh Trenchard, concentrated upon developing its strategic role as an offensive bomber force. The war witnessed a massive investment in the construction of air stations, which demanded the development of standardised temporary hutting and the adaptation of wide-span roofs used for warehouses to serve as hangars.The thematic survey identified only nine groupings of hangars for storing and repairing aircraft, seven of which are English. Designations, including the listing of the most complete at Grade II*, have been focused on those key sites where the most complete groupings of technical and domestic buildings have survived.The examples span the range of infrastructure that was required to support the supply of men and machines for service overseas – aircraft acceptance parks for the reception of aircraft from factories to aircraft repair depots and stations for training pilots. Four groupings survive from the training depot stations programme,which from 1917 became the greatest airfield construction project of the period. The Grade II* listing of the hangar group at Old Sarum, a significant addition to the Salisbury Plain group, underlines the importance of identifying the landscape context of these buildings. They comprise the most complete example of a pre-1919 flying field with its associated hangars and workshops in the UK, and as a result have been designated a conservation area. Conservation area designation has also been used to protect the wider context of the seaplane station at Lee-on-Solent and the former RAF Duxford (now the Imperial War Museum), which has retained the best-preserved group of first world war hangars and The interior of the seaplane hangar of 1918 at Calshot Activities Centre, which now houses the only indoor banked velodrome in the south of England, tennis courts and other facilities. As a unique evolved group, the hangars at Calshot exemplify better than any other site in Britain the remarkable development in aero engine and aircraft technology in this period. (Photo: MikeWilliams and English Heritage) The officers’ mess at Netheravon which faces into a group of officers’ chalets, all dating from 1913 and listed at Grade II*(Photo: English Heritage DP005128)
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