Picket post

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Small single storey / two bay picket post, aligned SW-NE on corner adjacent to 16 Derryoge Road. Constructed on a concrete plinth.

Pitched corrugated asbestos cement roof, semicircular ridges with circular asbestos cement stops. Moulded asbestos cement bargeboards and no rainwater goods. Temporary red brick walls (100mm thick), cement rendered with buttresses forming the bays and supporting the roof structure.

A single door forms the main entrance on right (narrower) bay of NW elevation. On left bay is a pair of four paned steel casements (no cill), now blocked up. NE gable is three bays wide, on left and right bays is a single four paned metal casement (both blocked up). SE elevation has a door to left (narrower) bay and one pair of casements to right bay (both blocked up). SW gable has a door to left of centre (flanked by single paned shoulder height windows), all blocked up; and a fixed window to right.

Just to NW of this structure, running SW-NE is a stretch of contemporary concrete road.

Historical information

The 1946 map of the Greencastle Aerodrome shows this building at the entrance to ‘Living site Three’. This structure is the most common type of picket post constructed on temporary airfields built during WW2. Its Air ministry drawing number is 14294/90. Living site Three had approximately 70 buildings (not including air raid shelters) of which only this building remains. The vast majority of the others were Nissen huts, which were sold after the war.

There were over 600 airfields in Britain at the end of WW2, and 29 in Northern Ireland. Construction work began at Greencastle in spring 1942, the main contractor being Carmichael of Edinburgh. Kilkeel RAF Station (as it was known) was commissioned on 30th July 1942, and handed over to the United States Army Airforce (USAAF) on 3rd August 1943, becoming Station 237, one of 12 such American airfields in N. Ireland. Its principal building groups were of utility construction, and dispersed around the local area to avoid concentrated enemy bombing; its radar station being furthest away, located at Maghereagh to NE of Kilkeel. The station was a satellite to Langford Lodge (near Antrim), preparing aircraft for operational bases in East Anglia. Its second important role was as a training school for aircrews arriving from America; this Combat Crew Replacement Centre (CCRC) was instigated on 20th December 1943, and was disbanded in autumn 1944. The base was handed back to the RAF on 31st May 1945, and decommissioned soon afterwards. It remained in Air Ministry ownership until the early 1960s when they were sold back to the locals.

Primary Sources:
1. Air Ministry Map: ‘Greencastle Record Site Plan; Dispersed Sites’, (1946).

Secondary Sources:
1. G. .B. Innes, ‘British Airfield Buildings of the Second World War’ (Leicester 1995), p.78.
2. B. Lowery (ed.), ‘20th Century Defences in Britain, an introductory guide’ (British Council for Archaeology 1996).
3. L. Murphy, ‘Action Station: The story of Greencastle Aerodrome’, in 12 Miles of Mourne vol. 3 (Kilkeel 1989), pp. 33-50.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Austerity architecture of the second world war attempted to simplify construction down to the minimal amount of materials and marry it with the maximum utility. This building is not an architectural masterpiece. Its interest lies in the historical reasons for its construction (WW2), its short practical lifespan, and its austere ‘temporary’ construction.