Description

LAUNTON

SP5924 A 421 (SOUTH-EAST SIDE)
1714/0/10055 RAF Bicester: Technical Site
01-DEC-05 Building No 92 (Parachute Store)

GV II
Parachute store and drying room. Dated 1926. By the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings, to drawing number 2355/25. Stretcher bond brickwork, diagonal asbestos-cement slates.

PLAN: A small rectangular gabled structure with lobby and principal space; above the main drying area a long ridge dormer light.

EXTERIOR: The main front has 4 large steel casements in 3 lights each of 8 panes, set to flush concrete lintels and stooled sills. The left gable has a wide pair of plank doors, with date-stone above, and the right gable a circular vent. The rear wall is plain, but with a central external brick buttress. Over the central bays is a continuous dormer light with 8 six-pane casements to a near-flat roof running back to the ridge.

INTERIOR: Retains original spatial layout, open to timber queen-post trusses visible, carried on internal brick piers. Panelled door to small office, with hatch.

HISTORY: The Technical Site at Bicester, separated from the Domestic Site, still has many original buildings, mostly of 1926 but with others added during successive phases of the 1930s Expansion Period. This is an important survival, virtually unchanged, that represents an unusually complete example of the earliest design for such a specialist store. An isolating lobby forms part of the layout, as it was important to reduce dust interference to the drying parachutes. For a time after World War II the building was used as the Station Church. This building comprises an unusually unaltered example of one of the first permanent designs for Britain's independent air force, standing on a uniquely important site.

Bicester is the best-preserved of the bomber bases constructed as the principal arm of Sir Hugh Trenchard's expansion of the RAF from 1923, which was based on the philosophy of offensive deterrence. It retains, better than any other military airbase in Britain, the layout and fabric relating to both pre-1930s military aviation and the development of Britain's strategic bomber force - and the manner in which its expansion reflected domestic political pressures as well as events on the world stage - in the period up to 1939. It was this policy of offensive deterrence that essentially dominated British air power and the RAF's existence as an independent arm of the military in the inter-war period, and continued to determine its shape and direction in the Second World War and afterwards during the Cold War. The grass flying field still survives with its 1939 boundaries largely intact, bounded by a group of bomb stores built in 1938/9 and airfield defences built in the early stages of the Second World War. For much of the Second World War RAF Bicester functioned as an Operational Training Unit, training Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders as well as British air crews for service in Bomber Command. These OTUs, of which Bicester now forms the premier surviving example, fulfilled the critical requirement of enabling bomber crews - once individual members had trained in flying, bombing, gunnery and navigation - to form and train as units.
For further historical details see Buildings Nos 79 and 137 (Type 'A' Hangars).

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26672227

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Cumbria: Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Gloucestershire 1: The Cotswolds: Cotswolds Pt. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Gwent/Monmouthshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Wales)
• 
  For the Record
• 
  Worcestershire Revised Edition (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Wiltshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)