Building 6 (Works Services Building and Water Tower), Main Site, Crudwell, Wiltshire

Description

1360/0/10009
01-DEC-05

CRUDWELL
KEMBLE BUSINESS PARK
Building 6 (Works Services Building and Water Tower), Main Site

GV
II

Water storage tower. 1938/9, to Air Ministry Directorate of Works drawing No 482/38; design by P M Stratton, architect to the Ministry. Yellow brickwork and Buildings in Flemish bond, concrete flat roofs with asphalt finish.

PLAN: The tower is located at the end of the central axis to the Main Site, approx 220m W from the guardhouse. The tower, a rectangle in plan, and incorporating a 30,000 gallon tank at its head, is set in a low, single-storey group of associated buildings in a square, with central court-yard.

EXTERIOR: The tower is a neat rectangle, about twice as long as wide, set with its narrow front and entrance facing the site enemy. A pair of doors under a flat concrete canopy is set below a tall narrow slot, open to the interior, and flanked by a very narrow blind recessed slit each side; this is repeated to the rear, but without the canopy. The long sides have three similar open slots, again flanked by narrow slits, all terminating in a continuous brick soldier course. A concrete floor slab is set back for the brick face at about two-thirds height in the slots. The main shaft is severely plain, with shape vertical sides until approx 2m above the heads of the openings, where it is set back 250mm, with a spayed offset, continuing vertically a further 2.5m to a similarly set back parapet course with concrete coping. The intermediate stage has a series of narrow blind slits, crowned by a continuous soldier course stopped short approx 2m from the corners. Behind the parapet, and appearing above the roof at the SE corner is a small brick addition with sloping roof, with a door giving access to the roof.

Around the base of the tower are various buildings, neatly arranged as a hollow square. To the front a low containing wall steps forward from the central door, then back to a yard wall linking, right, to a unit without windows, with a flush concrete 'frieze' at roof level, below a high brick parapet. This returns at the right in similar design, then a long block with vertical lights continues to the rear of the block. To the left detail is similar, but the single storey block has a central door with 2 windows each side, the band acting as a continuous lintel, with a smaller brick parapet; this returns for the full depth of the block to the left, in 9 bays with 3 vertical lights each side of a stepped-forward central section having raised central section containing three large 3-light openings, above 3:2:3 light casement; the 'frieze' band continues across the full length of the unit, which returns to a short end with one window each side of a central door. The raised unit also has a central square clearstorey section with 3 vents each side, and a flat slab roof. Across the rear is a further triple 5 bays, with a door at each end; this unit has the lower brick parapet, and to its left is the outer end of the slightly higher range, with 2 vertical lights. Within these ranges is a small courtyard.

INTERIOR: Not inspected. An access stair within the tower rises in the SE corner. The single-storey enclosing units are variously in continued use.

HISTORY: The water tower, both by virtue of its height, and its commanding position, is an important element in the ensemble of buildings on the Main Site. Its design also shows considerable sensitivity, with overtones of the Art Deco mode current at this time; the overall effect is not created by elaboration or expensive materials, but by careful consideration of simple detail in brickwork, and a keen sense of proportion in dealing with the upper level set-backs. Overall it is reminiscent of some of the church towers designed by Sir Giles Scott, one of the advisors to the Royal Fine Arts Commission which had a considerable impact on RAF design in the 1930s Expansion Period.

Kemble, by virtue of its range of 5 different hangar types including structurally advanced ones of parabolic form, is the most outstanding and strongly representative of the 24 Aircraft Storage Units planned and built by the Air Ministry for the storage of vital reserve aircraft in the period 1936-1940. The ASUs were all administered by Maintenance Command and were sited to the W of the principal bomber stations and fighter belt, and their function was to receive and store aircraft before they were made ready to be sent to operational bases: some, such as Hullavington to the south, were grafted onto existing Flying Training Schools. Apart from a cluster of 3 hangars on the Main Site, the hangars were planned in pairs around the flying field. The planners of ASUs thus exercised, for the first time, the principle of 'dispersal' in the planning of military airfield landscapes as opposed to fabric, the planning of domestic and technical sites having integrated these requirements from the 1920s. The dispersal of aircraft around the flying field, instead of being concentrated in the hangars, provided further protection against air attack (particularly crucial for the vital supplies of reserve aircraft to front line units) and had a profound influence on airfield layout during the Second World War. This principle also had an effect on hangar design in ASUs, in the use of both concrete and roofs of parabolic form - the latter originally turfed over for additional protection - which housed aircraft in the 'tails-up' position hung from their roofs. The Type D hangar, which combines concrete construction with bow-string trusses, owes its origin to developments in French engineering (as for example at the historic Montaudron airfield at Toulouse). The genesis of the parabolic Lamella type of hangar is the Lamellendach technique, produced by Junkers in Germany from the early 1920s, which utilised a structural grid of short and small-scale steel sections in a diagonal grid in order to create a parabolic vault. This type of hangar was built in England under licence from 1929, and there are four at Kemble (Sites A and B). In addition there are two variants in construction, using the same overall form and dimensions but developed differently: Type L uses close-spaced concrete ribs formed in pressed steel members (Sites F (not included) and C) and Type E uses ribs of small-section steel to support concrete slabs curved to the arc of the frame (Site E). These steel and concrete rib hangars most clearly relate to contemporary experimentation elsewhere in Europe, especially Pierre Luigi Nervi's Lamella-derived forms built for the Italian air force, the Zeiss-Dwidag concrete-ribbed vaults used for side-opening hangars in Germany and the concrete hangars developed for the French air force from the 1920s. All these hangar buildings stretched existing engineering technology in order to clear wide spans, forming the basis for developments in the post-war period. The existence of such a variety of these types of hangars at Kemble, also relating to an advanced type airfield landscape, is certainly unique in a British context, and no such group survives in France or Germany.

RAF Kemble was officially opened in June 1938, but construction continued into 1939 and a Station HQ was not formed until October 1940, under 41 Maintenance Group. By November over 900 personnel were involved, many of them civilians, staffing the Maintenance Unit: most were accommodated off-site, and others were in hutted units, mostly in Kemble Wood to the E. The daily amount of aircraft stored in October was 330, from antiquated Hawker Harts to Bristol Beauforts, Blenheims and Hurricanes. Two runways were built between September 1941 and April 1942, the main one being extended in 1943 in order to accept heavy bombers and accompanied by the building of new taxiways. The station survived aerial attack in 1940/1, it going on to play an important role in the readiness for D-Day with work on Horsa gliders and Typhoons in early 1944. The Fosse Way crosses the site.

(The Royal Air Force Builds for War: A History of Design and Construction in the RAF, 1935-1945, 1956, republished by HMSO in 1997, pp.290-302; Operations Record Book, Public Record Office AIR 28/218; Christopher Ashworth, Action Stations 5 (Military Stations of the South-West), Cambridge, 1982, pp. 115-7; J.S. Allen, 'A short history of 'Lamella' construction', Transactions of the Newcomen Society, 71 (1999-2000), pp. 1-29).

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