Newent, Gloucestershire

 

Crafty

Straight away, it was familiar, this utilitarian building tucked away in the centre of the Gloucestershire town of Newent, where I might more predictably be looking at the medieval church* or the timber-framed market house.§ Striking me, with its odd, seven-sided walls-come-roof design, it called to mind a kind of Art Deco Nissen hut, but I couldn’t remember what this kind of building was actually called, or exactly what it would have been built for. I knew, though, that its origins were military, and that I might find the answer in Paul Francis’ excellent reference book, British Military Airfield Architecture.† And yes, this book provided the answer. It’s a Handcraft Hut, although it was not designed to house people crafting with their hands…

Handcraft Hits were first made in 1942 by the Universal Asbestos Company, whose factory in Watford was called Handcraft Works. They were built as accommodation for airmen and women at airfields, and were made by bolting together asbestos cement sheets, the corrugations of which gave them strength enough to stand up without a supporting framework. On a good solid base, all you needed was some brickwork (and a door at one end) and interior dividing walls (made of asbestos in the original design) that varied according to whether the hut was meant for officers or other ranks.

This example differs from the standard design in that large double doors have been fitted and a brick plinth is needed to allow the asbestos cements sheets to rest on a level footing. The doors and location suggest a commercial use in this case, and a sign tells anyone who needs to know that the workshop once active in the hut has now closed.

Not a particularly attractive building, many would think – fine for an airfield in time of war or a yard in peacetime. The use of asbestos must mean that a lot of these huts must have been dismantled (one hopes by people qualified and equipped to do so). So why spend time contemplating an ugly building in a material now condemned as dangerous and even potentially life-threatening? Perhaps because it’s an instance of the kind of ingenious engineering that sometimes happens in wartime. A material then thought of as something magical, combined with an ingenious design using corrugation, formed into a many-sided sheet, made for an ingenious and no-doubt cheap structure that could provide much-needed accommodation that could be erected quickly by people of limited skills. A bit of history that’s worth remembering and, found like this one in the middle of a country town, rather a surprise.

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* It was locked, alas.

§ Blogged, after an earlier visit, here.

† Paul Francis, British Military Airfield Architecture: From Airships to the Jet Age (Patrick Stephens Limited, 1996). Copies come up on the second hand market, but it’s not a common book and usually commands a premium price.

Ely, Cambridgeshire

 

Remember

This bomber is flying over Ely Cathedral in a memorial window in that building commemorating the contribution of Bomber Command during World War II and remembering the airmen who were lost. Lincolnshire and East Anglia were the home to many squadrons of bombers during the war, and even when I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s the landscape was punctuated by control towers and fenced-off airfields. Hangars and a windsock can be seen below the cathedral in the window, representing the bases to which the airmen hoped to return.

Chedworth, Gloucestershire

Nissen and his huts

The other day I was driving to Cirencester and the route was blocked by roadworks in a village. I took the prescribed diversion, but turned off the signed route after a short distance, to take a back road that I didn’t know, but which the Resident Wise Woman and I both thought would take us closer to our destination. As we rounded a bend, a shout of delight rang out from the passenger seat: we had spotted the building in my photograph, probably the longest Nissen hut I’ve ever seen. A convenient gate provided a temporary parking space and I was soon out of the car and zooming in to this amazing enfilade of corrugated iron and developing rust. It was going to be a good day.

There was no one around to ask, but we guessed that the hut was a building associated with a former airfield nearby, itself not far from the current RFC Rendcomb Airfield. RFC.* That's RFC as in Royal Flying Corps, which is to say before the RAF. Suggesting that the area was home to a World War I airfield. If that’s the case, I thought we could be looking at quite an early Nissen hut. but it turns out to be a World War II hut, part of Chedworth airfield.¶

It was in 1916, that Lt Col Peter Nissen had the idea of combining a metal frame and sheets of corrugated iron to produce cheap, easily assembled huts for the Allied armed forces.† The army acted quite quickly on Nissen's idea because, they needed huts: like many a good inventor, Nissen had seen a need – for cheap huts that could be made quickly to house an expanding army – and set out to solve it. Although the idea of the hut is very simple, the finished design was not done in a day, because Nissen had to refine it, thinking of everything from an easy, watertight way to joined the iron sheets to a set of simple illustrated assembly instructions that could be followed by unskilled men working at speed.

And so it was that these strange rounded structures began to appear. The Daily Mail, being cheerful in terrible times, described what it must have been like they they emerged on to the field of conflict, without any apparent preparation and in magically short order:

‘At about the same time as the tanks made their memorable debut on the battlefield, another creature, almost equally primaeval of aspect, began to appear in conquered areas. No one ever saw it on the move, or met it on the roads. It just appeared! Overnight you would see a blank space of ground. In the morning it would be occupied by an immense creature of the tortoise species, settled down solidly and permanently on the earth, and emitting green smoke from a right-angled system at one end, where its mouth might be, as though it were smoking a pipe.’

The huts caught on, at first to house troops, kit, and even field hospital beds, after the war for all sorts of civilian uses. They're not uncommon on airfields§ and many have also ended up on farms, or used as factory extensions. But I have not seen one as long as this  – even the lon huts I saw on TV making up a former prisoner of war camp were not, I think, as big as this one. It must need its many windows, as the standard layout for the shortest huts, with just a pair of windows in each end, simply would not work in a structure as long as this. But work this one must have done, for years, for whatever purpose it is now used, and although somewhat rusty, it shows signs of care and recent repair. Long live Nissen’s huts!


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* Wingwalking is one of the activities pursued here. For a fee, you too can get strapped on to a framework on the upper wing of a lovely Boeing Stearsman biplane and zoom and bank above the Cotswolds. I find it a frightening idea, but many love it, and someone was enjoying the experience as we drove past.

¶ Thanks to readers who supplied information via the Comments section.

† For much of my information on the origin of these ingenious huts, and the Daily Mail quotation, I am indebted to Fred McCosh, Nissen of the Huts, BD Publishing, 1997.

§ Back home, I checked the OS map and saw that the airfield indeed extended in this direction – and that maybe even the road I was driving along was originally part of it.