I found this building yesterday in a field just over the Northern boundary of Glasgow Airport.  It is not recorded by RCAHMS as far as I can see and I have no idea what it was for so have not started a page. The field has bases in it and a bridge over a burn. The surrounding fields have banks of demolition debris bulldozed along their edges.

The building has 2 rooms to the west and one larger room to the east.  Whatever it was used for it required heavyduty earthwiring right round it and over the roof. Opinions are sought.

Good pics.

Unqualified thoughts are the obvious - this is an ex-RNAS area, RNAS Abbotsinch, so could be a leftover.

There's also the Postwar option as the civil airfield developed, and the mention of what would appear to be more earthing than normal could suggest buildings used for early radio installations for the site, or even early Radar installations, test, or development.

RNAS Abbotsinch is probably a good starting point though. I've mentioned it elsewhere, but not yet attempted to track any details down.

Geez Fox, I'm really disappointed in myself at not recognizing this building at all. I used this side road (is it the one that goes down to the Rid Smiddy?) a great deal, yet don't recall ever seeing the building. It has a buffer wall so it likely had some wartime function, and as Apollo suggests, probably associated with the Abbotsinch Fleet Air Arm base.

I posted a link to this on the WW2 forums, there are a couple of members of the Airfield Research Group on there. Hopefully they'll be able to give you an answer .

Right road Dugald but at most times of the year it is hidden from the road by a large Hawthorn hedge so would not be that obvious.  Mind you I have been down the same road thousands of times and never saw it but then I wasn't looking for anything.

Thanks Historian the more brains the better.  It seems to me that it must have been built for something specific, probably as Apollo says connected with RNAS Abbotsinch but until we have an idea of what it is it would be difficult to give it a page.  I certainly cannot recall anything else with the heavy earthing cables or with similar baffle walling.

First opinions are that it might be an ammo/pyrotechnics store, as much due to the blast wall & ventilation as the amount of earthing.
Not cast in tablets of stone, though.

could it been some sort off out post for the old renfrew airtport at arklestone

I think it is too far away from the old Renfrew Airport and more likely to be associated with Abbotsinch or some other wartime base in the area.

Something I hadn't thought of which someone in another forum suggested was that the heavy wiring was in case of a lightning strike.  Possibly it was an ammunition store.

I don't think I'd go along with the ammunition-building suggestion. just guessing, but the building has the appearance more of an air-raid shelter. The baffle wall at the entrance is consistent with the air-raid shelter guess. I'm not sure either that heavy wiring was a part of an ammunition building... and weren't they usually pertially underground?

It's not an air raid shelter, since they were generally single room constructions if built from bricks, and the pre-cast concrete Stanton shelters were usually covered with earth for extra protection. I would tend to agree with the ammo/pyrotechnics explanation for now, since the magazines at HAA batteries were internally divided into five compartments in order to separate the charges from the warheads.
Still never seen such an unusually-shaped blast wall though.

I wondered of anyone was going to pick up on the blast wall shape.

Not only is the shape interesting, which must be a clue, as the effort of building that as opposed to a rectangular lump must indicates some purpose, but there is also the aspect of the single door at the opposite end of the building, which has no similar protection.

Perhaps the structure is not a blast wall, since it's unlikely an attacker would play 'nice' and not launch an assault against the undefended access to the opposite end of building, and you can hardly assume bombs will fall at one end of a building, and not another.

Such blast walls would be defensive, and play no part in protecting personnel in the event the building was some sort of explosives store. This would require surrounding earth banks on all sides, intended to deflect and dissipate the initial force upwards rather then outwards. Falling debris may be hazard, but less so so than a direct, adjacent explosive blast.

We may be looking at an incomplete picture, with only this single building and the shaped wall at one end.

For example, the wall shape would afford defenders cover to shoot from, unlike the more usual flat blast wall, and allow them to defend to their sides. This would be impossible with a flat wall, which would merely provide a 'killing corridor' for the attacker to clear. And a determined attacker could make a run for the protective middle of the W formed by the walls, and lob a grenade or two over the top to despatch the defenders fairly quickly.

Then again, the three area formed by the walls could just be for the Maintenance Group, forming sand, cement and gravel pits, with the tools stored in the building!

Lots of other possibilities, it would be nice to think a definitive answer will appear.

Yes the baffle wall are yet another mystery.  One thought that occurred to me was the possibilty that they were designed to trap any light spilled from the 2 doors.  Mind you it seems a lot of bother to go to.  There could have been a similar wall at the other end which the farmer could have taken down to make entry/exit easier for animals as it has been used as an animal shelter.

Interesting point, Fox. If you've ever seen the dispersal area from Macmerry airfield at Gladsmuir Junction, at the end of the two 'E-pens' is a crew standby building. Difference is that it's raised off the ground and reached by steps at both ends. It also has ventilation slots and no windows, but is one big room. It's also like the Black Hole of Calcutta inside. There are no blast walls apparent though.
This building doesn't appear to be anything like the same idea, since painting the interior walls white would defeat the purpose of letting the aircrew acquire night vision naturally by sitting in a room lit by red light bulbs. Just a thought though.

I showed pictures of the building to an ex army chap tonight and his immediate reaction was that it was an explosives  store and that the wiring was anti lightning.  The baffle wall is designed so that if something blows in one store room it will blow out the door (weakest point) but the blast will be directed across the angles and back into the room and consequently not affect the store room next door.

Can I dispel the lighting theories? I didn't want to jump on the suggestion earlier, but it's moving into the "Credibility By Repetition" zone.

Lighting conductors are placed on tall structures in the hope of diverting lighting strikes attracted to the structures as a result of the high electrical field they (the structures, not the conductors) cause in the surrounding air. Contrary to popular belief, the conductor doesn't attract the strike, the structure does. When the field becomes strong enough, the air breaks down and the lighting heads for the nearest attractive path to ground - this is initially the structure, not the conductor, which only come into play when the strike nears it. The plan being that as the strike nears the structure, the points on the conductor will cause increased air breakdown and ionisation, resulting in the strike going for the conductor rather than the structure  - it doesn't always!

The conductor's job is to sacrifice itself, in the hope that the strike will pass preferentially down the metal strap of the conductor and to earth, where the charge is dissipated. In the course of conducting thousands of amperes to ground, the conductor will most likely be vaporised, so is very much a one-time defence, lighting can, and does, often strike twice or more in the same place, since it has a ready made ionisation path through the air after the first strike, and the vaporised conductor has coated a handy path to earth on the once protected structure. With luck though, the source will have moved on, so the second strike chance falls somewhat.

The last thing you would do with an explosive store is put a lighting conductor ON it. You might want to put one one tall structures nearby, but you certainly wouldn't want to be deliberately causing thousand of amperes to be flashing over the outside of a building with explosives, and worse still, detonators inside it.

A brick building is not a Faraday Cage, which would actually be perfectly safe with megavolts dancing and arcing away on the outside.

I think someone was looking for a bell-pull attached to a leg tonight

That building would fall apart if a single box of hand grenades went off inside it, and the idea that an adjoining room in the same building could be unaffected by an explosion through the wall?

If the initial bang didn't do the job, then there is indeed a fair bet that the reinforcing/amplifying effect of the secondary blast reflected back into the confined room space from the angles walls would finish the job. The idea of reflecting blast back into the enclosed space it just came from just beggars belief. Explosive handling/safety looks for ways to dissipate any blast, preferably upwards, as any sideways component has the capacity to take out personnel and equipment. Even falling debris is (relatively) safer.

(You can tell I'm the one invited to leave the room at Brainstorming Sessions, can't you? )

I've actually got some pics of a structure with earth straps bolted around the outside for radio use, but I can't get hands on them as they PC they're is playing up and the drive's not accessible unless I dismantle it and slap it in another one. There was definitely VHF kit in use (100-150 Mhz), for  distance of 30 miles or so, and there might have HF too, around 30 MHz,to get further, but I'd have to dig up the history to confirm that.

My we are a tad vitriolic today!.. There is no chance the chap was pulling my leg.  He was involved in setting up a military museum in Ireland a few years ago and spent his life in the Irish military.  He went on to say that during the troubles explosives had to be accounted for and guarded at all times and the he had been involved in building an explosive store which had a somewhat similar layout including the earth wires.  He said they had a great deal of trouble driving the earthing spikes into the specified depth.  The main room would have been for the gelignite etc. which required ventilation to prevent it sweating and the smaller rooms for fuses so we would not be talking about a building stacked from floor to ceiling necessarily.

It could have housed demolition charges to render the airfield useless in the case of invasion.

Today I showed the pics to a retired British army officer who had not seen such a building but thought it was probably a weapons or ammunition store.  He thought the baffle walls might have beeen stacked with sandbags and have been the place where you pointed your weapon at the bags and proved it was clear of ammo before handing it in.

So as usual you pays your money....................

The walls, including the inner ones are quite thick.  Check the position of the vents externelly and then internally. Aerial pics give the impression that the roof is inset, i.e. it has a parapet round it.  Given there is a line of bricks offset near the top of the walls this is probably related to the height of the roof.  In which case it is quite thin.

Concencus on 28DL is that it is a Small Arms Armoury used for storing machine gun and light anti aircraft ammunition.  Apparently they are usually much bigger than this one.  Heavy wire is there to discharge an electrostatic discharge from any source. ( Knowledge of electrostatics would have been much more limited in those days.

The baffle wall is designed to protect from blasts in both directions and more modern versions exist at Greenham Common.

Fox, I've had another good look at the pictures and I hang my hat on it having been an air-raid shelter, with perhaps some modifications carried out later... such as the wiring and rear door. Could it have been used as an armoury? Yes, i suppose it could have at some time been used as an armoury, but than so could virtually any building have been used as an armoury... the main thing is for the building to be dry. I doubt that it was ever built as an armoury, nor as a munitions dump.

An ordnance/bomb disposal building?  If it had been used for storage of ordnance, surely there would be other, similar buildings in the vicinity, if not, for good reason, immediately adjacent. Such a building at RNAS Machrihanish, HMS Landrail, was located on the fringe of the airfield. According to local report, a fatal accident took place within the building suringf a disposal operation, resulting in the flat roof being blown off and deposited at a short distance from the remains of the walls of the building.

This would account both for the isolated location of the building, and the peculiarities noted in its structure. An air raid shelter, to have any real purpose, would have to be located in the vicinity of personnel engaged in some task, while an armoury would not be located in an isolated position, such that it would require special security measures.