Description

Circa 1916. Tall single storey, 6-bay, rectangular-plan former lecture hall; component of former Royal Naval Airship Station. Concrete plinth with integral drainage channel, brick base course, white-painted corrugated iron, timber eaves course and barge-boards. Door in lean-to porch to S end elevation. Square-plan boiler house adjoined to N elevation of hall by extension of boiler house roof to form canopy; predominantly horizontal timber boarding. Lean-to porch to centre of S (principal elevation) with entrance to E return; wider lean-to to left of porch.

6-pane metal framed windows with top-hung hopper. Red-painted corrugated iron pitched roof; mono-pitched roof to boiler house; ridge ventilators.

INTERIOR (seen 2010): painted, vertical timber boarded lining to ancillary room.

Statement of Interest

A-Group consisting of East Fortune Hospital Welfare Office; East Fortune Hospital Offices; East Fortune Hospital Nursing Administration Block; East Fortune Hospital Stores; East Fortune Hospital Driver's Office; East Fortune Hospital Loading Bay; and Stores and East Fortune Hospital Recreation Hall (see separate listings).

This former lecture hall is one of the few remaining original buildings of this significant former WWI airship base and the starting location of the first East-West trans-Atlantic flight. East Fortune is the most complete example of a former purpose built WWI airship base known to exist in the UK. The building is largely-unaltered and a rare surviving example of a corrugated iron military building of this period. The Air Ministry Record Site Plan, 1945, records the building as crew procedure trainer and it served as a recreation hall when the site was a sanatorium (Derek Carter Associates et al, 2001).

With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the Admiralty established a series of home defence airfields along the North Sea coastline to protect the east coast shipping sea-lane from the threat of German submarines and the Zepplin. Scotland, in particular, played a pivotal role in coastal defence and developed a network of sites strategically concentrated along its east coast. In September 1915 the Director of Naval Air Services gave approval for an air station to be established at East Fortune. Its position was ideal for coastal patrols of the east coast and the Firth of Forth. The Royal Naval Air Station was officially commissioned on 23 August 1916, when the first airship arrived. It is understood that at least one of two coastal airsheds must have been completed at the point, along with the necessary ancillary buildings. In the winter of 1916/1917 the rigid airship shed was constructed after which the station was expanded. This included more airship hangers and the replacement of wooden barracks in brick. East Fortune was one of five airship stations in Scotland, and with Longside, Aberdeenshire was one of the two principal stations in Scotland designed to accommodate the larger 'Coastal' and 'North Sea' types of non-rigid airships as well as rigid airships.

Following World War 1 the airfield was used to launch the pioneering HMA R.34. This airship made the first East-West trans-Atlantic flight and the first return crossing by air. The airship station was closed on 4 February 1920 and in 1922 the large airship sheds were dismantled. The preceding year a portion of the airship station was sold and operated as a sanatorium until 1997, although it was temporarily requisitioned during WW2 and operated as part of the RAF and WAAF major training base. The brick barracks were converted into hospital wards and additional buildings constructed in brick, such as a large boiler house and laundry and canteen and meeting hall. The WWI barracks and the interwar sanatorium buildings still exist on the site.

The site is situated to the north of the disused East Fortune airfield, a scheduled monument (SM Index Number 4804). Since 1975 the airfield and associated structures have operated as the National Museum of Flight.

List description updated 2012.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17795861

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

• 
  Maintaining and Repairing Old Houses: A Guide to Conservation, Sustainability and Economy
• 
  Staffordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Lancashire: Liverpool and the South-West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Hampshire: Winchester and the North (The Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East: Norwich and North-east v. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Gwent/Monmouthshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Wales)