Life cycle of ownership of military buildings

[Dragon]

I am trying to find exact locations and brief histories of particular military buildings used prior to and during the Great War. Records in the specific UK geographical area I am interested in have either been destroyed or are extremely sparse.

I’m doing this to try to give a little bit of help to Graeme in his Drill Halls Project, (see Nationals section) because information on drill halls in the area which interests me is proving elusive. Graeme doesn’t mind me meddling and I have passed on to him anything I’ve discovered.

In the absence of specific records pertaining to individual buildings (drill halls), I am considering whether more oblique sources of information may provide useful leads. Therefore, I thought of trying to establish a life cycle of ownership which will enable me to do an audit trail.

I infer that the life cycle of one of these buildings might include commissioning and decommissioning. For some, there may have been transfer from Ministry of Works to PSA. Eventually for many of them, evidence suggests that there has been transfer or disposal to third parties for either recycling or demolition and redevelopment.

At each stage of the building’s life cycle, it would be necessary for the various bureaucracies involved to understand who had:

1. legal title to it;

(While it was in use:)

2. custodial responsibility (sharing use out between different units etc);

3. financial responsibility for operational expenditure (cleaning, repairs, utilities, public liability, insurance);

4. financial responsibility for capital expenditure on improvements, major maintenance etc.;

5. administrative responsibility for the implementation of capital works by contractors or direct labour;

(In its disposal:)

6. responsibility for initiation and execution of reviews of the need for and viability of the building;

7. responsibility for the disposal of the building and the money received from its disposal.

(This is not an exhaustive list but covers my thoughts at the moment.)

My thinking is that at each of these points, someone, somewhere must have viewed records and made records. These records might provide my point of access to information which has escaped conventional archiving.

For example, it would not be possible to reach the point of transferring or selling one of these drill halls, and in the case of a sale, receiving a considerable amount of money for it, without legal formalities being followed and a record made of the transaction. (Would it?) Where might the records be kept of the sales and the money generated by the sales? How does one begin to trace what happened to the money after the sale?

Therefore, my question is this:

Looking at the whole period to the present, which bodies involved in the lifecycle might retain relevant material, and how it might be accessed?

Many thanks for any suggestions.

Gwyn

[KONDOA]

Gwyn

Many drill halls were never actually owned by the military as such but by local associations and the like. These in many cases have now passed into the hands of town and city councils so that would be my first port of call.

Roop

[Moonraker]

Dear Gwyn

Quite a task you've set yourself I've studied the building and disposal of WWI army camps in Wiltshire in great depth, but can't offer much. Bulford & Tidworth barracks were solidly built in the very early 20th century and most of the wartime camps were erected on camping-sites on land already owned by the War Office. Their construction was rushed and the wooden huts soon became tatty. After the war many were sold off and dismantled to be erected as village halls or shops (one such can still be seen in Chiseldon, south of Swindon).

There was a big fuss when the buildings of Stonehenge airfield were sold on the understanding the purchaser would remove them, but he sold them on to the owner of the land who apparently wasn't obliged to remove them. They became a poultry farm for a few years, finally being demolished in the late 1920s

In July 1918 the Army Council was already anticipating the day when some camps would be removed, for it sought, and obtained, the permission of the Treasury to bid up to £4,500 for Cortington (Corton) Manor, near Warminster, at an auction to be held on July 30. Presumably the manor had been requis tioned on the outbreak of war. Of its 59 acres, 37 were occupied as an "artillery hutment camp" by the War Department. To re-instate the site - including removing the macadamised roads and concrete floors - would "amount to not less than, and might indeed greatly exceed, the capital value of the whole estate". One estimate, possibly on the high side, was £10,000, including £4,300 for cartage of the broken concrete. The manor house and farm were let to the YMCA "in connection with the camp". The file in the National Archives ( T 1/12177/29318) doesn't mention whether the Army Council bid succeeded (not the first time a TNA file hasn't recorded the outcome of a situation), so a delve in the local newspaper is on my list for my next visit to Wiltshire local studies unit.

I guess you're more interested in permanent buildings, rather than temporary wooden huts, and I guess county record offices might have some appropriate papers.

Terry

[John_Hartley]

Gwyn

I'm with Roop on this one. Local authorities are likely to be the most fruitful. Perhaps decisions of planning or "works" committees

However, I still reckon that, in trying to identify the buildings, your existing project to track down local newspapers is going to be most fruitful. Again, you are getting ot come across references to demolition/development.

John

[RichardH]

Gwyn,

I think that the local authority planning department should have something on individual buildings- maybe give them a call, or better, drop in to see them and ask to see the "TP File" for 'X' building- this will be a file with all manner of information relating to the building you are looking at. I'm not sure if all authorities do this, but I've certainly used them when researching buildings myself, aged from 1900 to the 1940s, normally. The kind of information will be varied- from historic planning applications, extensions, changes of buildings use.

Hope that helps

Regards

Richard

[Dragon]

Roop, Terry, John and Richard

Many thanks for the helpful suggestions.

I had vaguely wondered about town councils and planning, so it sounds as if a speculative enquiry to those currently responsible for the various towns concerned might be a useful way forward. I will try that.

Just for the record, I want to say that Graeme already has a fantastic amount of data and pictures in his database, including addresses; I don’t want to imply otherwise. This is just my personal frustration at the sparsity of information about exactly where some of these buildings were. I found one through the happy accident of getting talking about Lancasters to an old man running a market stall in the town where it was supposed to be. They did exist; local people say they did. So I don't understand why in some cases (not all), there are no records of where precisely they were.

I thought this was going to be simple...

Gwyn

[johnreed]

Try the NA at Kew. Crown Estates CRES 35/ 305 to 3290. CRES 49/2612- 2613 or WO 32, WO78. You can search the catalogue on line.

John

[Dragon]

Thank you very much for the suggestion, John. I will try that, too.

I am not sure what these categories of references mean, but I shall learn.

Gwyn