Hardly there
As a small boy I was fascinated by airfields. Airfields (not airports, which in the 1950s and 1960s were for the rich to travel from, and therefore out of bounds) were quiet, empty places, mostly, and oddly spacious in a countryside that, even then, was quite intensively farmed. I longed to see aeroplanes taking off and landing, but hardly ever seemed to be there at the right moment. So I had to be content with the purposeful impedimenta of the airfield, most of it unfamiliar to me but not too difficult to understand from its names alone. There was a perimeter fence (chain-link), a control tower (concrete), runways (ditto), grey parked vehicles (various), and a windsock (brightly coloured). For much of the time the windsock seemed to be the most animated thing around. Also occasionally on the move was a long grey low-slung truck, a low-loader in fact, sometimes spotted on neighbouring roads, apparently for moving bits of aircraft around.
And then there were hangars,† long and low, hugging the ground. Some even tried to blend into the ground with their grass-covered roofs. They had broad, sliding doors but these were usually closed and anyway were too distant for me to have seen what was inside. Still, when I see hangars, I’m fascinated by their tantalizing doors and their functional, often ground-hugging form. I’m still very ignorant of their history and complex typology – I see from a Ministry of Defence website that there are at least 56 different types in use in Britain alone, ranging from temporary portable structures to vast warehouse-like sheds that can take airliners or transport aircraft.
This one is a Type E hangar at RAF Hullavington in Wiltshire. Its design was introduced in 1937 – no doubt lots of hangars were being built around this time – and has a curving steel frame supporting a concrete shell roof, covered by the all-important camouflaging grass. It’s huge, and very functional, but also rather elegant, and from a distance it blends into its surroundings so that it seems hardly there at all. Whenever I pass by the door still seems to be closed.
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† Hangar: not a self-explanatory word. Were there lightweight, World War I biplanes hanging up in there? I wondered. No, hangar’s etymology is far from certain, according to the OED, but comes from French (and probably also Germanic) words meaning shelter. Our hamlet has the same roots. The dictionary’s first example comes from Thackeray’s Henry Esmond and has nothing to do with aircraft at all: ‘Mademoiselle, may we take your coach to town? I saw it in the hangar.’
12 comments:
This is exactly why I enjoy your blog so much. Yes, it's about buildings, but also about places and their atmosphere. Thankyou.
Thank you, Peter. Sometimes one sees a building that seems to encapsulate an atmosphere, a whole period of history maybe, and that hangar was a case in point.
Rather like disused railway buildings, aircraft hangars hold a deep fascination. What's within? a forgotten collection of quietly mouldering Spitfires? This one's a gem, close hugged to the ground with it's own proto-seedum roof...not dissimilar to Adnam's modern eco distribution depot outside Southwold. How obviously different to the upright vastness of the airship hangars of Cardington and equally captivating.
Jon: Agreed. The fascination is for various reasons, I think. The sense of what might be inside; the connections to the past (for my generation at least, the Battle of Britain was still the recent past when we were young); the effectiveness of the buildings' design; and what I can only call atmosphere – the mixture of the quietness and purposefulness of these places.
'Proto-seedum' Jon. I like that.
Peter/Jon: Me too.
Brilliant.
My parish church growing up was a hangar, unfortunately they demolished it in the 90s.
I remember these grass covered hangers at RAF Sealand in north Wales when I was a child in the 60's and 70's. We'd sneak through a gap in the fence, climb to the top and slide down them on cardboard sledges, the excitement heightened by the fact that the MOD police could come along at any time. Happy days.
Thanks, Alan. Glad I prompted some happy memories.
Hello Philip is this picture of hanger 87 ? The one next to m4 carting
Higgly: As you'll see from the date on the post, it's getting on for two years since I was there. I seem to remember that the carting place was nearby, but can't recall its exact location.
Yes, Higgly, it is the one near the Karting Hangar - this site was sold off several years ago. You are probably aware that he airfield has now been sold to Sir James Dyson who is siting his new technical campus there. It has been stated that the airfield will be developed with respect to it's aviation heritage. Wiltshire Council planning application 17/02344/FUL shows what Dyson would like to do with hangars 85 and 86, the old parachute packing hangars at D site, near Stock Wood. This is just the first application, the rest of the airfield will be developed when a master plan has been agreed.
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