Details
319/0/10010
FILTON
Triple Hangar at ST 60 806, Filton Airfield
01-Dec-05
GV
II
Group of four paired aircraft hangars in line. 1918, by the War Office's Directorate of Fortifications and Works to drawing no. 417/17. Walls, buttresses, central piers and door 'pylons' in brick, curtain walls half-brick thickness in cheaper bricks, softwood 'Belfast' roof trusses, corrugated steel door cladding and later profiled steel roofing.
PLAN: a triple-span shed, each shed divided by a central row of brick piers; on each of the longer sides is a low single-storey set of stores or offices.
EXTERIOR: Triple segmental gables presented to east and west elevations, The general design of all the sheds is similar, with minor differences in the scope of the attached out-buildings. A series of raking buttresses to the side walls, which have brick workshop annexes with steel casement windows. Brick 'pylons' outside the outer bays, into which slid the doors, are in red brick, with three sets of paired piers carrying thin brick stiffening diaphragms with straight top but segmental lower edge - similar to the internal construction.
INTERIOR: Hangars divided by central row of paired brick columns; these carry a longitudinal thin brick stiffening diaphragm in brick on a segmental arch, are two bricks square, with a clear gap, and the outer faces carry a concrete spreader on brick corbelled in three courses to carry a strut in three small scantling timbers spliced into the doubled bottom chord of Belfast trusses. These trusses, commonly used from 1916 for aircraft hangars, have their bearing ends plated in diagonal boarding to the point where the strut is taken in, then a close-set diagonal grid of small struts. The doubled upper chord, in a flat segment, carried close-set purlins, and the lined profiled roof sheeting. There is vertical X-bracing between bays, and horizontal bracing in the bays adjoining the main doors.
HISTORY: The Bristol Aeroplane Company, founded by Sir George White, was established in 1910 as one of Britain's first aircraft manufacturers. It also established a series of training schools for civilian and military flyers, the hangars at Larkhill in Wiltshire having survived from this period. By the Second World War the Bristol Company supplied engines for nearly half the world's airlines and more than half the world's air forces, and in the Second World War it provided a third of the RAF's engines. Sited to the north of Sir George White's aircraft factory of 1910 (converted out of tram manufacturing sheds built in 1908), this part of Filton was developed as an Aircraft Acceptance Park for the reception and final assembly of aircraft from factories and their flight testing, storage and distribution to operational squadrons. The buildings, which survive as the most complete on any of these types of sites in existence (numbering 27) in November 1918, were retained for use by the Bristol Aeroplane Company after the war, and after 1929 became part of an operational fighter base. Following the disbanding of 501 (County of Gloucester) Squadron in 1957, the hangars reverted to use by the aircraft factory, now British Aerospace.
