Hangar no. 6

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A large single storey gabled hangar aligned approximately on a north-south axis, with lower cross-gabled 5-bay blocks flanking it on the east and west sides.

Main hangar has full-width sliding steel plated doors to each end, now no longer moveable, with panelled asbestos sheeting to the gables above, and to the long sides above the cross gables. Some asbestos panels broken or missing. Corrugated asbestos sheeting to roofs.

Lower flanking blocks have brick side walls to north and south, with corrugated asbestos cladding panels above, surmounted by flat asbestos panels. Asbestos rainwater goods. Sliding doors, iron-plated; corrugated asbestos sheeting to roofs. Gables to east are entirely of brick, with one later door inserted. Gables to west are similar to gables of large hangar, on smaller scale.

SETTING: The building stands in a former airfield which is now mainly used for agricultural and manufacturing purposes. Concrete area to north and west, and around perimeter, with grassed areas beyond to south and east.

Historical information

Built in 1942 or 1943 as an aircraft hangar for Langford Lodge airfield when the site was being developed into an Air Depot for the assembly, modification, repair and storage of aircraft for the 8th Air Force of the United States Army Air Force. The machine shops and propeller testing and overhaul facilities were housed in this building.
The airfield had been originally opened in 1941 as a Satellite Landing Ground which was established for the temporary storage of new aircraft in the care of the RAF’s Maintenance Unit (No. 23) at Aldergrove. It had been one of five SLG’s in Northern Ireland allocated to RAF Aldergrove, and one of about 50 such airfields in the United Kingdom. As later developed into an Air Depot providing complete logistical back-up facilities to the USAAF it was one of only three such primary air depots in the UK, along with Burtonwood and Warton in Lancashire. The Langford Lodge base closed in 1945; briefly used for the RAF’s No. 5 Air Navigation School from 1952-3; acquired by the present owner in 1958.

References – Primary Sources
1. Copy of original drawing showing plan, section and elevations, unsigned and undated, in collection of the Ulster Aviation Society.
Secondary Sources
1. E. Cromie, Langford Lodge airfield – a brief history (1998), leaflet available at Ulster Aviation Society Heritage Centre.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
E. Spatial Organisation
F. Structural System
H-. Alterations detracting from building
I. Quality and survival of Interior
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Z. Rarity
W. Northern Ireland/International Interest
V. Authorship

Evaluation

This is a building of historical interest due to its association with the Second World War as well as being of local interest as part of the development of the Langford Lodge estate. The value of the building is enhanced due to its rarity, being reputedly one of the few examples, and possibly the only surviving example, of a war-time hangar in the United Kingdom.