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.

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.

Meant to ask earlier, but keep forgetting

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.

Just some more rambling thoughts.

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.

Ok, try this...

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.

That seems a reasonable assessment of the available evidence

Sorry , the title will need to be fettled!  

It would anyway

It seems to be an awful mouthful - there must be a technical term buried somewhere.

Quoted from The Fox

Sorry , the title will need to be fettled!  

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.