Monument record 15215/3 - HMS Gosling Camp 3

<1> The GeoInformation Group, 2005, 1940s RAF Aerial Photographs from Operation Review, 106G UK 622, 10/08/45 (Aerial Photograph). SCH4608.

Aerial photographs show a dozen H-shaped structures, presumably temporary buildings or huts, arranged around the perimeter of the site. Centrally are a group of structures, many with arched roofs reminiscent of nissen huts.

<2> Various, Various, Oral communication to the HER, Winfield H, 25/03/2004 (Oral Communication). SCH2330.

Possibly accommodation associated with ROF Risley.

<3> Royal Navy Research Archive, 1999 -, Royal Navy Research Archive, HMS Gosling (18/11/2020) (Web Site). SCH8940.

Royal Naval Air Training Establishment HMS Gosling opened in July 1942 at Risley, as the Fleet Air Arm training depot for Air Fitters, Air Mechanics and Radio Mechanics. It also trained Royal Marines of the Royal Naval Air Station Defence Force. It comprised five separate, dispersed, sites; Camp 3 at Lady Lane, Croft, was a training camp. The establishment was collectively named as R.N. Aircraft Training Establishment Risley. In late 1944 HMS Gosling was provided accommodation, training and the conversation and outfitting of specialist radio and Radar vehicles for the Mobile Naval Airfields Organisation, part of the Mobile Naval Air Bases. Closed 21 October 1947.

<4> Webb, M, 2011 -, Historic Aviation Military.com, RAF Croft (18/11/2020) (Web Site). SCH8941.

During the mid-1950s the site was renamed RAF Croft and was occupied by the USAF (United States Air Force) as a transient base for American personnel and their dependents from nearby RAF Burtonwood. Overnight sleeping arrangements provided in the H-block type buildings sited on the northern and southern sides of the main building complex. By 1959 the USAF had left RAF Burtonwood and Croft was no longer required any more, shortly after the H-block sleeping buildings were demolished, leaving the main building complex comprising the dining and kitchen area, cinema, tower block and adjoining buildings, intact.

<5> Castlering Archaeology, 2012, Former RAF Croft, Lady Lane, Croft, Cheshire: Level 2 Building Record (Client Report). SCH6969.

Camp 3 of a group of camps commonly referred to as HMS Gosling. The camps were commissioned in July 1942 and used to train radio mechanics, air fitters and mechanics as well as Royal Marine Trainees of the Royal Air Station Defence Force or the Fleet Air Arm as it is also known.

HMS Gosling was decommissioned following the end of the war in March 1947. The camp was then used by the RAF and by the mid-1950s it was commonly known as RAF Croft. By this time Croft was tenanted by the United States Air Force (USAF) as accommodation for American personnel and dependants connected to nearby RAF Burtonwood.

The first cartographic record of the site is the 1949 Ordnance Survey six inch map which shows the existing red brick buildings that survive on the site together with the H-shaped huts that once provided accommodation to the north and south of the central service buildings.

The H-shaped huts were frame structures with brick entrances which looked like they were designed as partial bomb shelters to deflect blast. The accommodation had a bathroom with a shower and heating radiators powered from a central power plant. The H-blocks were presumably a type of Nissen hut, the semi-cylindrical steel sheeted structures first designed during the First World War. Only the concrete bases survive in the undergrowth on the site, providing no evidence of the structures that once stood above.

A 1961 Ordnance Survey map indicates that the H-shaped huts had been removed by this date. Some of the long narrow bases of the former H-shaped huts hut survive on site.

The larger buildings, such as the mess hall, were ‘Butler buildings’, examples of the pre-engineered, standardised and ready to assemble building shells with gabled roofs that were first manufactured in 1901 by the Butler Manufacturing Company, Kansas City, USA. The Butler buildings were a different concept to Nissen huts and were presumably flown in from the USA.

Whist no plan has been located to accurately identify the surviving buildings on site, they nevertheless appear to represent the former theatre / cinema; the heating tower; canteen / bar; toilet blocks; the main dining hall / mess; the kitchen area; armoury; payments office and general offices and store rooms.