I also disagree with the air raid shelter scenario. It's too big, and even civilian shelters had a four inch thick reinforced concrete roof. What kind of 'postwar modifications' would have justified the expense of altering it?
The air raid shelter is a non-runner, simply because the building is neither underground, nor does it have any practical protection from blast, so offers little protection and is actually more dangerous than just standing outside - if the walls blew in, you're gone.
The pic below is one version of the standard airfield shelter that was used. This offered protection by earth banking against the walls to deflect blast upwards, and sometimes had a building at its centre. The arrangement of walls and warren ensured there was no direct path to the occupants, for blast (or, I suspect, fire from an attacker).
The small armoury seems a distinct possibility, but having looked at the pics again, looking at the door frames, these are not designed to be particularly robust in terms of security, or to allow the passage of anything other than hand-held items (ok, small-arms), I'm thinking in terms of moving ordnance. It just wouldn't be effective or efficient.
There may also be something in Fox and Passerby's observations (thanks for posting btw - we've been on tenterhooks waiting for you after the gems dropped into the Main Site pages ), thinking back to the suggestion that the roof appears to be of lighter construction than the wall (I'm inferring that difference from what I can see in the pics) as this would mean it would 'pop' before the walls, blowing and sending blast upwards rather than sideways, with the external V wall doing its bit for anything that was blown out of the doors.
Incidentally, trying to be tactful the doors are not in centre of the V of the external walls, therefore blast or debris exiting the door would not be 'reflected' back into the room as suggested above, but would return and strike the wall to the side of the door.
Is the arrangement of the interior as per the blindingly obvious, with half the building dedicated to a single large room to the east with a single, unbaffled door , and the west part divided equally between the two rooms with the baffled doorways?
The real question concerns the walls. From the pic of the two adjacent doors, this dividing wall is only a single course of bricks, as would the wall containing the doorways appear to be. Are the remaining walls similar? If so, the whole building is not as strong as that curious wall, which may also be significant.
Are there any internal apertures or similar between any of the internal spaces, or are the walls complete and uninterrupted? This would mean no communication or internal transfer of any contents between the rooms, other than by walking around outside the building.
Considering the robustness of the baffle to the west, I think it may (ok, I'm setting myself up far a fall) be safe to assume the door to the east never had a baffle, the reason for this being the lack of any foundation being visible. They might knock it down if it was in their/animal's way, but they'd be unlikely to remove the foundation and make good the ground with soil to a proper depth. Animal feet and rain would soon erode a thin layer of soil over concrete/brick, revealing anything solid just under the surface.
Yes one big room to the east and two apparently identical ones to the west.
Well spotted. Yes it does appear that the western wall is single brick but all the partition walls seem to be 4 bricks thick. If the pic of the 2 doors had been taken from the south it would look identical. If you look at the internal shot and compare it with the spacing of the vents from outside the internal walls must be 4 bricks thick too. The rooms internally had no features apart from the vents. No communication between them or up to the roof that I could see hence only 1 pic.
As to the eastern door I didn't see any evidence of a baffle wall or fell any walking about.
Small arms armoury and weapons store. The east room reserved for 'safe' weapons only, those with no ammunition, and no live ammunition stored with them. This makes the dividing wall the protection, hence no wall at the door.
The west room reserved for ammunition and issue and return of 'live' weapons. As noted above. weapons could be proven to be 'clear', and any accidental discharges that escaped the room would be retained by the double bounce around the V, and not be returned to the room if they happened to rebound from the wall, as might happen with plain, flat wall.
If they stored items such as grenades, or mortars for defence, these may have been stored on the west, with fuzes, detonators, primers etc to the west.
I'm not 100% sold on the static/earthing side of things (and why run it on the outside, it should be on the inside, and could have exited at the floor vent), although procedure could require it. Detonation by such things as sparks is a movie myth (for common materials at least) as the activation potential is way above the energy such sparks can deliver. Think of the life for the average soldier if there was even a remotely realistic chance of his ammunition or ordnance going off as he moved around normally, let alone while in action. The enemy would just have to keep him moving... and wait.
An armoury is a place where Small arms & Ammuniton are stored. Now this piece of knowledge is really something very elementary (especially on this forum!) and this, together with the fact that I don't know what fettled means, and Apollo saying, "...there must be a technical term buried somewhere." leads me to wonder if i am missing something or if I'm being led up that proverbial path... which is it Fox?
Fettled means fiddled about with a bit! I hadn't noticed that I had put 3 ls in small.
I think the name might come from it being a store for ammo not only for hand rifles and machine guns but also light anti aircraft guns. You may be right that it is still an armoury. If I am leading you up a garden path then this is unintentional and fortunately virtual.
Fox, thanks for the info. With regard to the use of the word armoury, they had an armoury in the Territorial Drill Hall on Elder St. in Govan and they kept all kinds of personnel weapons and mortars, but not any light anti aircraft guns in it... unless the Bren gun was consodered a light anti aircraft weapon.
Amazing how much can spring from an innocent little thought
Artillery and gun batteries are fairly straightforward, their ammunition is stored in magazines, building (or isolated store in a ship) remote from the guns to minimise the chance of blowing up the whole place in the event of an incident involving the guns.
Amoury is an obvious choice in this case, since we appear to be referring to small arms, but in this particular case I'm reluctant to go down that particular route because of the isolation of the building. My concept and definition of an armoury is storage of weapons and ammunition, generally under secure conditions to avoid misappropriation. Some even add a requirement that the term be applied to places where training is carried out too, but I wouldn't go that far.
The isolated building, and relatively small, light doors (the frames suggest no heavy security) implies, to me, that the security aspect was not emphasised, relative to the safety aspect of the wall guarding the doors. The conditions would be less than ideal for weapons, and unless packed for storage rather than use, would soon have become rusty. A couple of small holes in the wall do not ventilation make, and there is no provision for heating. Even if there was not a guard posted, I'd like to think that an armoury would have been placed where it was actively seen, and could have been reached to get hold of the weapons quickly.
I also wonder about the rules that might have been applied with regard to storing arms and ammunition together at the time.
Even cars and bikes were supposed to be disabled if being left unattended, to deny the enemy their use.
I was just thinking that the building might have had some sort of name assigned to it, reflecting its purpose on the site.
Small Arms Store, or Small Arms Ammunition Store seems fine, but it just struck me that Small Arms and Ammunition Store seems a bit of a mouthfull, and having the two together might not have been likely, given the convenience of having both in the one place if the wrong people gained access.
What we don't know, or rather I don't know is where the boundary fence of RNAS Abbotsinch was at that time. Given it's proximity to the present boundary fence it could easily have been inside the secure area.
Guilty as charged - I do admit to assuming that this building was relatively isolated with respect to the rest of Abbotsinch.
My thoughts were that it would have been trashed with the rest of the station if it had been near any of the populated areas, and that it had been located remotely because of tis function and the protective wall.
On that thought, I wonder how many, or if there are any, buildings remain from Abbotsinch, scattered about the area? There are bound to be plans of the airfield knocking around.
I've used one or two business (ie. not farms, although there's no reason why they wouldn't have claimed buildings too) located along the tracks there, and it occurs to me that they may be in ex-Abbotsinch buildings, and that some 'little old houses' planted there might actually be ex-Abbotsinch too.
I can't prove it, and it's been so long is I've been there, but they may, and I emphasize the may me some that are built of the red, smooth-faced brick that sometimes features, but I'm not saying this for sure, just as a hazy memory from long ago. It would need a look to confirm one way or another.
It would have been at the NW corner of the airfield at that time. The road went straight across the present runway to Paisley. A runway extension scheme when it became Glasgow Airport meant diverting the road up to the motorway.
I can't say that any other brick buildings ring any bells. I think there are remains of a couple of the pillboxes with one of them being used as the foundations of the flying club.
The phrase Small arms and ammuniton store came from a couple of apparently knowlegable guys on 28DL.
I was unaware that we were still speaking about the mysterious Abbotsinch "storage building". Anyway, Ive changed my mind about my definition of an armoury :
"An armoury is a place where Small arms & Ammuniton are stored."
I believe now, in view of Apollo's, "generally under secure conditions", that the use of "armoury" would imply the building was in a "built-up" area, not in an isolated location.
I should add that the definition is very much what I have come to understand an armoury to be over the years - I didn't want to start quoting dictionaries since they are based on etymological definitions, rather than practical application (should be the same, but words change over time - think of an armoury a few hundred years ago to see what I mean).
From visiting stately homes, an armoury means something different there, compared with say the armoury on an aircraft carrier today. Consider an armoury today, which would probably be a nice warm place, with armoured doors and controlled access, an armourer in attendance to control weapons issue, and room with rifles, hand-guns, automatic weapons and similar small arms, plus ammunition, all neatly racked out.
I still think that building, even in wartime, would not have been considered environmentally suitable for weapons storage. It would have been cold and damp (there's no chimney or proper ventilation), so anything made of steel would soon have started to rust of not constantly maintained.
Some sort of constant use would almost have been essential, to keep the contents 'fresh'.
Aerial pics at the time of the photographs seemed to show that the roof was below the level of the building's walls and therefore probably thinner than it looked as if it should be. This would be in accord with the storage of explosive devices as the blast would take the roof off and save the main structural walls.
Older pics show a different roof than Google's, with different markings.
The length of the shadows in the new Google images as cast by the east wall inside the structure appears to be the same as the length of shadow cast by the building on the ground outside, so the roof would have to be really low if that was the case. There's also some sort of splat on the 'floor', not apparent on the earlier pics. Guess it's another spot that would need a wander to verify.
I'm on the scrounge for some more info...
The visit notes refer to side, central and end walls, which don't mean a lot to the reader, and only make sense to the visitor - can you identify which walls these correspond to in terms the compas, viz north, east or whatever.
(Don't alter the page itslef - it's offline at the moment, so any changes there will be lost just now).
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), thinking back to the suggestion that the roof appears to be of lighter construction than the wall (I'm inferring that difference from what I can see in the pics) as this would mean it would 'pop' before the walls, blowing and sending blast upwards rather than sideways, with the external V wall doing its bit for anything that was blown out of the doors.
the doors are not in centre of the V of the external walls, therefore blast or debris exiting the door would not be 'reflected' back into the room as suggested above, but would return and strike the wall to the side of the door.
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