I see RCAHMS have surveyed this site recently and have photos on line - more pics than we have!

One or two...

They don't actually seem to have added any info with the later entry to the text?

Since the grid refs can now be plotted quickly, I stuck them on the map, but removed them. While their references are usually accurate, the refs given for the centre buildings are all a few metres to the west. Since they're not yet needed, I just ditched them, but it was odd to see them in the wrong place.

I tend not to use their precise locations as I prefer to place the marker manually, next to a subject, rather than on top of, and obscuring it.

I don't buy into the engine room theory, rcahms appear to be engine room mad at present.  The building was only bricked up a few years ago.  It had a baffle wall at the north end with an entrance either side.  The building itself had one entrance in the centre at the north end.  It measures about 2 metres by 4 metres and had no windows or other appertures!  Funny design for an engine house.  There is a pile of brick and concrete rubble to the north of the northern building which I do not remember but looks like the demolished remains of another similar shelter.   I remain convinced that it was an air raid shelter.

Yup, ok, humbled on this one, and flew off an  imaginary jaunt with this one. I'll sort my ramblings later.

As you say, lack of any obvious inlet or outlet should rule out an engine room, also, the access is rubbish for getting a motor/generator set in there.

Doesn't look any less likely to be blown over by a nearby bomb though, so the shelter option looks poor too. I might be tempted to go with a chemical store - the baffle wall to impede anything that might have been ejected from it, but who knows when there's no real pointers.

I've made the same comment regarding gun batteries, you'd think this would be easy to find some sort of historic info for.

Incidentally, I'm trying an expanded category for these sites - rather than explain what a decon centre is on each page every time, the category listing page will be headed with a description. Not complete by any means, but I think the concept makes sense, and may help decide what categories are worth having in future.

Should be better now.

However...

I'm unclear on what appears to be a fifth building I mentioned, and you didn't tell me I was imagining - I thought it came up at the start, but I may be confusing it with the one beside the admin building to the south.

This can be seen in the aerial view, particularly the Bird's Eye view as seems to be from a wintry time of year, and the trees are bare. the building appears to lie in the wooded area just to the north of the main group. I had initially thought this was the building in question, but had the view inverted when I pulled out for a wider view

Unfortunately, it's missed in the rc pics, lying in the area just left of the area captured in the view of the two main buildings from the north.

If you mean the bigger building a bit away from the others I had forgotten about that one.  In my time it was a garage for the park tractor and machinery.  I must have a closer look at it next time I am over as it could be the one rcahms is referring to.  Familiarity breeds contempt as my Gran used to say.

This may help (maybe it's a lost engine room and rc should be emailed asa! :



Oops, period greyscale was unintended - leftover from previous editor use.

Returning to the other small building, seen under the tree in the upper left corner in the above clip...

Looking at the detail of the rc pics, and the roof of this building in particular, the feature referred to as a blast wall is not very heavily built - appearing to be only a full brick thick, and the roof extends to meet with top, so lending it a bit of support. Since the position means it wouldn't have been much use for gunners, and attack on a decon station if invaded would have been less than enthusiastic, could this wall in conjunction with the canopy formed by the extended roof simply have been a bit of shelter from the weather for those fumbling with barrels etc at the door?

I just find myself struggling with the idea of it being an air raid shelter when I see it as it appears in the pic above. It has no extra cover, is not semi-buried (and Anderson shelter would be tougher under its earth covering), and with its four plain walls and no supporting walls inside, is probably more likely to collapse under the effect of a bit of plast than the larger building beside it

What you have marked as the 5th building is a modern gas installation.  The air raid shelter is at the upper southern end of the complex.    The building I was referring to is further to the SW.

If you look at Multimap looking N in Birdseye the air raid shelter in under the tree to the left of the nearest building.

The other bigger building I mentioned has disappeared.  In the same view there are two bushes at the bottom of the putting green.  Behind the lefthand one is a patch of lighter green.  This is where the other building was.  Its absence explains whay I never photographed it.

Well, you can't photograph what's not there, and I won't be trying to work in the gas terminal (no wonder it wasn't mentioned) as part of the gas decon centre - even if it has a tenuous connection

I've ditched the engine room reference, I don't even think it merits mention - regardless of who suggests it.

I'd still rather stand under a tree than an unburied or free-standing brick box in an air raid, concussion would just blow it away before the bigger decon buildings, and have added thoughts about it being a store, for a bit of stimulation.

Air raid shelters were never designed to take a direct hit as far as I know.  They were designed to protect against shrapnel and near misses.

Only bunkers deep underground were intended to survive direct hits - as you say, anything else was just protection from whatever might have been flying around.

The problem with the little building at Gourock is that it is in the open and free-standing - the concussion from a nearby bomb blast would collapse it before the decon buildings, as their size, and even trivial internal walls would keep them standing longer. It's just not a place you would want to be inside if bombs were dropping nearby.

If it was steel-reinforced concrete it might have a chance, but the layers of unsupported brick would just unzip along the mortar lines if a bomb landed nearby.

I saw a number of brick garages, not unlike this building, around London in 1987, the year of the hurricane, and they had just been blown in on the cars inside, or collapsed when the tree beside them was blown over.

Since I'm really trying to save your life, and really really don't want you to diving in there in the worst case, forgive me for going techie...

The building has already been stated to have one door and no windows, or even vents as far as I can see.

In such a case, when the concussion or blast wave from a nearby explosion arrives, the building will either blow out if the wave enter the door - it has nowhere to go, so the internal pressure increases until the building explodes (that's why windows and vents are good since they blow and release the pressure.

A little thought, and the opposite effect takes place if the wave arrives at the opposite end. In this case the building is compressed, while it will be stronger in compression, the door means internal air will be driven out, and the building will ultimately collapse inwards. Windows and vents would allow the pressure wave to pass through, even if the windows blow in, this takes place at a pressure level that breaks the windows rather than the walls.

That may be so but there used to be public shelters in the back gardens of council houses, each one shared by several houses and they  were the same design scaled up.  They were 3 bricks thick as far asI remember the small one is at least 2 bricks thick, maybe 3. Since it is now boarded up it will be hard to know.

I remember those, weren't the same things thrown up behind tenements?

If we're talking about the same things - all demolished now - weren't the interiors a bit like rabbit warrens, which would have served to hold them up?

This was the page for info about public shelters, but it's died  

http://www.worldwar2exraf.co.uk/Online%20Museum/Museum%20Docs/airraidshelterspage4.htm

Maybe it can be found elsewhere.

Ah, found an unlinkable copy, I'll have to quote text and the pics are dead, but it give an idea of what was needed, and why that store with its toffee walls and paper thin roof would have been a "bad place" to be during a raid. Actually, as will be seen, even the proper public shelters were a bad idea, and not really a good place to be either...

In September 1935, the then British prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, published a circular entitled 'Air Raid Precautions', inviting local authorities to make plans to protect their people in event of a war.

Some towns responded by arranging the building of public air raid shelters.

These shelters were built of brick with roofs of reinforced concrete. Some local authorities however ignored the circular and in April 1937 the government decided to create an Air Raid Wardens' Service and during the next year recruited around 200,000 volunteers.

In August 1938 Adolf Hitler began making speeches that suggested he was going to send the German Army into Czechoslovakia. The British government now began to fear a war with Nazi Germany would happen and Neville Chamberlain ordered that Air Raid Precautions (ARP) volunteers to be mobilized. Cellars and basements were requisitioned for air raid shelters and trenches were dug in the parks of large towns.

In March 1940 the urgency for community shelters got underway, the government supplying the materials, and the driving force behind the scheme.
Private builders were employed to carry out the work under the supervision of Government surveyors.

The shelters consisted of 14-in brick walls and one-foot thick reinforced concrete roofs, similarly to, but much larger than, the private shelters in backyards and gardens being introduced slightly later.

The communal shelters were usually intended to accommodate about fifty people from families in the surrounding estates. The shelters were divided into various sections by interior walls with openings connecting the different sections. The Sections, or rooms were normally furnished with six bunks.
       
The construction work went on rapidly, as Councils tried to accommodate as many of the population in their area as possible, until the resources of concrete and bricks began to run out due to the excessive demand placed on them so suddenly.

Due to the incompetence of the Government's construction specification, however, an ambiguous instruction was misinterpreted, and resulted in a sand and lime mix being used in the construction, without the benefit of cement.

These dark shelters quickly became squalid, unsanitary and dangerous. They were cold, damp, and dark. Ventilation was poor and the stench not helped by the fact that the chemical toilets provided in them tended to overflow.
     
When the bombs began to fall, many of these inadequate shelters simply crumbled, and people sheltering in them died. Also at around the same time rumours of accidents started to circulate, such as on one occasion people being drowned due to a burst main filling up the shelter with water.

It was then that these shelters began to become highly unpopular, and shortly afterwards householders were being encouraged to build or have built private shelters on their properties, or within their houses (such as the Anderson or Morrison shelter), with materials being supplied by the government.

The buildings have now been demolished and the site cleared.  I have updated the page.

It would be nice to hope that someone managed to photorecord the interiors before they were flattened but somehow I doubt it.  WWII artifacts have little value to most people and these were quite rare.