22 C O N T E X T 1 3 7 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 4 ImperialWar MuseumThe ImperialWar Museum site at Duxford near Cambridge was mostly rebuilt in the 1930s but retains the best-preserved group of technical buildings representative of a training depot station dating from 1917, including three paired hangars which played a starring role in the Battle of Britain film – when the repair hangar was blown up. www.iwm.org.uk/visits/ iwm-duxford Old SarumA cafe with a terrace overlooks the airfield at Old Sarum near Salisbury. Two paired hangars and a repair hangar of 1917 design, and other technical buildings, relate to the least-altered flying field of the period up to November 1918. www.oldsarum.co.uk Calshot Activity Centreon the Solent makes full use of its unique surviving group of seaplane hangars, which were sited next to one of HenryVIII’s coastal forts, built in the 1530s in order to help defend shipping in this strategically crucial area. It retains the best-preserved group of early seaplane hangars in Europe, ranging from a small timber hangar built early in 1914 to house Sopwith Bat Boats to the immense steel-framed hangar, now in use as a sports centre and velodrome, which housed the Felixstowe flying boats used on anti-submarine patrols. www.hants.gov.uk/calshot Farnborough in Hampshire is one of the key sites in Europe relating to the development of aviation technology and aeronautical research. Its closest comparable site in a European context is Chalais Meudon in France, where a variety of buildings – including an airship hangar of 1879 (the earliest in the world) and wind tunnels – have survived, and the Adlershof research and development centre at Johannisthal, east of Berlin. A balloon factory and the Royal Engineers’ School of Ballooning moved to the Farnborough site in 1905–6, and the portable airship hangar (re-erected in 2004) remains from a number of dirigible sheds. The first British Army aeroplane was flown from this site in 1908 by the American Samuel Cody.The headquarters survives from the Royal Engineers’ Air Battalion, founded in 1911, comprising a school building with attached balloon mobilisation store. One hangar (the Black Sheds) survives from the pre-first world war air station.The planning of the R52 wind tunnel building in 1916 marked a critical period in Farnborough’s development, as public censure over the vulnerability of the Royal Aircraft Factory’s BE2c fighter had led to its closure as a site for the manufacture of aircraft by the British state. Farnborough, renamed the Royal Aircraft Establishment, was now placed at the heart of cutting-edge developments in aviation technology lasting into the jet age. It closed as a research establishment in 1999, and a museum has been established within the premises of the Farnborough Air Sciences Trust. The site also retains the internationally-significant wind tunnels of 1934–5 and 1939–42. www.airsciences.org.uk HendonThe RAF Museum at Hendon is located on the former Hendon aerodrome, from which the RNAS conducted the night defence of London.Two of the three paired hangars with Belfast truss roofs, built in 1917 for the Aircraft Acceptance Park at Hendon, survive, now joined, reclad and incorporated into the RAF Museum. www.rafmuseum.org.uk Hooton All three hangars of the 1918 training depot station at Hooton, Cheshire, survive, now in the care of the Hooton Park Trust. They are more altered than Duxford, but their importance is buttressed by Hooton’s later history and the unique survival of its twin training depot station at North Shotwick (Sealand) in North Wales. www.hootonparktrust.co.uk) MontroseThe museum at Montrose near St Andrews is sited within a unique survival of hangars dating from 1913–16. www.rafmontrose.org.uk One of the hangars surviving from the Aircraft Acceptance Park at Filton, just north of Bristol, which was developed for the reception and final assembly of aircraft from factories and for their flight testing, storage and distribution to operational squadrons. It was sited to the north of Sir GeorgeWhite’s aircraft factory of 1910, converted out of tram manufacturing sheds built in 1908. (Photo: English Heritage) Further reading Francis, P (1996) British Military Airfield Architecture from Airships to the Jet Age, Patrick Stephens, Sparkford Hawkins B, Lechner G and Smith P (eds) (2005) Historic Airports:proceedings of the International L’Europe de l’Air Conferences on Aviation Architecture, English Heritage, London Lake, J (2004) ‘Historic airfields: evaluation and conservation’ in Schofield, J, JohnsonWG, and Beck CM (eds), Matériel Culture: the archaeology of twentieth century conflict, Routledge, OneWorld Archaeology 44 Robertson, B (1977) Aviation Archaeology: a collector’s guide to aeronautical relics,Patrick Stephens, Cambridge English Heritage (2003) Historic Military Aviation Sites:conservation management guidance at www.helm.org.uk/upload/ pdf/Aviation%20Sites.pdf? 1294589909 Jeremy Lake has worked with English Heritage helping to develop modern techniques of thematic assessment on militaryindustrial, chapel and farm buildings, and currently in its historic environment intelligence team.
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