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.

Highley, Shropshire

Job done

These are probably the humblest of all railway buildings. They’re lamp huts or tool sheds, and these corrugated iron versions, just 6 ft wide by 9 ft long, were ubiquitous on the Great Western Railway, and no doubt on other lines too. You found them by the trackside, near stations, signal boxes, and anywhere else where lamps, tools, and other small items needed to be stored. They were cheap, utilitarian, and supplied in flat-pack form, for easy erection on a prepared base in a matter of hours. Corrugated iron made assembling these structures quick and easy. Prepare a base, order up the flat pack, assemble, add a coat or two of paint – and the job was done. Whether they were building the roof of a large train shed in a city or putting up a little shed at a country halt, the Victorians looked on corrugated iron as a marvel of the industrial age.

Usually you find these huts on their own – if you needed more space, the flat-pack building firms like Boulton & Paul of Norwich or Samuel Taylor of Birmingham could supply something larger. But here on the Severn Valley Railway at Highley there are a couple, close together, painted in GWR colours, like the little platform shelter I posted recently on the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway at Hailes. Most of them are admirable examples of the way heritage railways find old, worn-out structures, restore them, and give them new life.

People used to look down on corrugated iron structures, especially small ones like this. ‘It’s just a tin hut’, they’d say. ‘What’s so special about that?’ But they were economical, readily available, easier to put up than a chest of drawers from IKEA, long-lasting, and simple to customize with a coat of paint in your railway’s livery. These days, more people appreciate these qualities of corrugated iron, and more and more I notice garages, sheds, and fences in the gardens of private houses, even in the cosseted Cotswolds where I live, many of them put there by people who haven’t necessarily chosen this material because it’s cheap. From a lamp hut to a barn for your 4 x 4, this Victorian wonder material is quietly but effectively doing its job.

Wingrave, Buckinghamshire

On the hoof

The previous post about Spiegeltents set me thinking about the other kinds of “portable architecture”, from caravans to yurts and gers, that one sometimes sees in the English countryside. I found this example among some pictures I took a while ago in Buckinghamshire. It’s apparently a version of the classic shepherd’s hut,* the movable shelter traditionally used by shepherds on the downs and wolds when they needed to be near far-flung flocks. These wheeled huts, then, are the opposite of the wonderful lookers’ huts of Romney Marsh, about which I’ve posted in the past.

The heyday of the shepherd’s hut was probably the 19th century – one thinks of films of Hardy novels. But their history goes back much further. One website on the huts traces it back at least to the late-16th century, when an agricultural writer described how in some places the shepherd “hath his cabin going upon a wheele for to remove here and there at his pleasure”.

The huts were originally made mainly of timber, with a wooden body, wooden wheels, and a curved canvas roof, waterproofed with tar, on a wooden frame. Later, corrugated iron was often used for the roof, and now versatile corrugated iron sheeting is generally used to clad the walls too, which may be finished with timber tongue-and-grooved panelling inside. Spoked metal wheels on wide axles are common. This variation seems to have a wooden body on some modern wheels. The stable door, curved roof, and chimney are all features that hark back to the traditional hut.

People are still making shepherds’ huts, and finding uses for them as home offices, summerhouses, even shops at visitor attractions. They’re an inspiring example of how a traditional structure can find new roles, its wheels helping it to migrate from the downs to the backyard.

* Or perhaps a road-menders' hut: see the comments on this post