Building record 2855/0/9 - Ancillary Building adjacent to Hooton Hangars, Hooton Park Airfield

<1> Ellesmere Port and Neston Borough Council, 2007, Ellesmere Port and Neston Borough Council Local List of Historic Buildings, LL49 (Index). SCH5437.

Workshop which is part of a single storey garage/maintenance buildings for vehicles associated with airfield. Pitched felted roof, brick piers between open fronted bays with internal buttresses, presumably to protect the piers against impact damage. Unusual roof trusses with diagonal bracing to buttresses. Another building in this group has unusual triangular trusses similar in form to a Belfast truss, but without the top “longbow” shape. If the Listed Hangars are to be retained, the ancillary buildings assist in the interpretation of the role of the airfield and are therefore of group value.

<2> Various, Various, Oral communication to the HER, Watson, M 31/1/2011 (Oral Communication). SCH2330.

The garage buildings and one of workshops were listed in 2003, leaving one remaining building (workshop?) in this group as locally listed.

<3> Historic England, 2011, The National Heritage List for England, 1437893 (Web Site). SCH6528.

Workshop, 1917, designed for the Royal Flying Corps. Rendered half brick thick walls are laid in stretcher bond, strengthened by brick piers with tile copings (Temporary Brick construction), interspersed with ten-pane galvanised steel windows with red tile cills. The windows incorporate a four-pane side-hung casement to one side and a single-pane top-hung casement to the other. The five-bay side elevations have tall end piers with four shorter piers supporting the remainder of the wall.

The south-east elevation has a sliding ledged and braced double vehicle door and a secondary steel pedestrian door. Each bay in the north-west elevation has a ten-pane window. The gable elevations are divided into three bays by a pair of piers and each of the bays has a galvanised-steel window. The north-east gable has three paired ventilation bricks, and the south-west gable has a square ventilation louvre over the central window. The gabled roof is coated in grey resin and fibre-glass (replacing the failing felt) and has timber barge boards to the gables. Plastic gutters are attached to timber fascia boards to the side elevations.

The interior is divided into two rooms, an open four-bays workshop and a one-bay storeroom that occupies the east bay. The rooms have a concrete floor and painted brick walls, with internally projecting brick piers. The piers have painted stone corbels that support the timber lattice Belfast roof trusses, which carry a timber plank roof lining. There is a stone block (possibly a stove base) at the south-west end of the room.

In 2015 the rainwater goods and roof covering on the building were replaced (the roof structure is original).