I nearly entitled this blog entry “Battle of the Bogs”, but it wouldn’t be entirely accurate, as the problem I’m having right now isn’t the lavatories – I’ve got them (everywhere…) – it’s the washing, brushing and showering bits – in military parlance, the “ablutions”.

I suppose, before I go any further, I should probably post a bit of positivity – and hey, maybe some pictures. First of all, the numbers game:

Problems:	12
Queries:	22
Queue:	8
Done:	237
N/A:	14
Total:	281

That’s not a lot different than last time but, to put it bluntly, I ain’t been having fun recently. Medication went up, my functionality went down. I think yesterday was the first time I’ve opened Blender in months to actually bash polygons. The end result is that I’ve finally done the blinkin’ Officers Mess and, possibly more importantly from the perspective of making progress, I’ve created the Station Sick Quarters, Decontamination Annex to the SSQ, plus the Ambulance Garage and Mortuary. Not a particularly “nice” thing to have to research, but the answers turned up to be closer to home than I expected… twice. In two different homes.

While hunting through the Airfield Research Group forums, as I spend far too much time doing, I discovered mention of an existing ambulance garage and mortuary at a place called High Ercall – just outside Telford in Shropshire, near where I used to live with my parents. This building itself wasn’t a whole lot of help, it’s very overgrown and hard to see much of, but what’s that behind it? Yup. It’s a single storey, t-shaped, SSQ building with a decontamination annex. Standing. Existing. Fricken’ FINALLY!

Okay, so the plan didn’t exactly fit the one at Halfpenny Green, but the dimensions were the same, if the “long” and “short” arms at the head of the “T” were on the opposite sides and the annex went to a different bay compared to the ground remnants at HG, but it was close enough to allow me to create something representative, so the building is now on the “master” CAD file.

I should probably do something to make the entry corridors / footbaths heading into the Annex look a bit better – the floor is concrete, but you really can’t make it out against the “rendered” wall texture. There’s also a bit of a debate going on between myself a gentleman called Andy about whether the rear door on the side of the mortuary should be there… evidence varies and the best example still standing – near my new home at the former RAF (now HMP) Maghaberry – has a big hole for that bay’s left side wall. I may need to revisit that. Anyway, onto the other new major addition to the site; the Orifices, erm, sorry, Officers Mess.

These three buildings, the Petrol Pump House, Batmans Quarters and Officers Mess, are still standing but are part of a farm site and being used as barns or other storage. They’re 221, 222 and 223, if you have access to the Aerodrome Reference Plan. In the foreground of that second shot are timber Officers Quarters, the Braithwaite High Level Water Tank and, if you look bottom left, you’ll see the projection room of the Gymnasium/Cinema that’s currently filling in for the Cinema – however, with some excellent information provided by the aforementioned Andy, the Cinema has moved from the “Problem” to “Queued” on the progress spreadsheet.

One that’s gone the other way, from blue (queued) to red (problem) is building no. 237, the WAAF Ablutions and Latrines. This one is still standing and had the correct dimensions to fit the “WAAF Decontamination, Bath, First Aid and Ablution Blocks Type A, 16339/41” as detailed in Paul Francis’s book. But it isn’t. For starters, that drawing specifies not one, but two, blocks, one 85 ft long and 30 ft wide, the other 75ft long and 20ft wide with an annex – the decontamination bit of the rather long description – on one side. That 75x20ft building is the one that almost exactly matches the extant building at Halfpenny Green,,, But the annex is missing and the latrines are in the 85x30ft building on that drawing. The HG example is also not drawn to a local number, but a ‘main sequence’ one, 2968/42. Reading the text, 16339/41 stopped being built in 1941 (the same year the drawing was created, that didn’t last long then!) and was replaced by ‘single buildings carrying out both functions’. So that’ll include the 2968/42 then, won’t it. Insert a deep sigh here… Although I’m tempted to just put the 75x20ft one from 16339/41 in to represent it until further notice.

So the last two days have been spent trawling the internet for more information on the women’s loos… But not only that, as the ‘red list’ also includes 097; Airmens Bath House, 172; Sergeants Bath House and 219: Officers Ablutions. For some reason, anything still standing to represent any of these is derelict, collapsed, usually covered in plants and generally really unhelpful to try and base anything on. The Sergeants Mess outline on the ARP bears no resemblance at all to the floorplan of any type I can find, I have no idea what the WAAF Hostel looked like and ditto the Grocery Store. I may have found two more extant buildings on the site now occupied by the Garden Centre, but of course I’m now hundreds of miles away from them, even without viral pandemic issues. I’m working on that – or more precisely asking someone else to.

Anyway, enough griping. I’m sick of that now, let alone anyone else. I’ll end with a handful of overview shots showing some of what is on my “Master” Blender file already, just because I took them earlier today. It’s pretty much guaranteed that this isn’t the last tome from me on the subject. Sorry!