The Hutments – Hursley Park

The Hutments. Courtesy of P. Russell

Following the destruction of the Supermarine Works in Woolston the Design and Production (Planning and Commercial) Departments were moved to the newly requisitioned Hursley Park and nearby Southend House.

According to the Vickers-Armstrongs Quarterly Report for 4th Quarter 1940

“At the beginning of December office staff was transferred to Hursley Park”

For many workers buses provided the vital link for the staff to reach the estate,  several miles from their Southampton homes. However, many sought new homes to live in but accommodation was a serious problem.

1:2,500 OS Map overlay of Hutments. National Library of Scotland

In the other dispersal areas some accommodation could be found for workers by billeting them on local residents (a forced allocation of unoccupied rooms by local government Billeting Officers). In the villages surrounding Hursley Park there was a limited supply of rooms but it was not sufficient.

In Hursley, the family of “Bill” Fear lodged with the Wild family in their small timber framed cottage on the main road through the village and which was also the Saddlery. In a curious intertwining of family stories the daughters of both “Bill” Fear and Harry Wild would go on to become Tracers in the Supermarine Design Office.

At nearby Farley Chamberlayne the family of Oswald Bell, having been bombed out of their three-bed home in Bitterne and staying briefly with relatives in Romsey, took lodgings in a single room in Glebe Cottage.

However, the problem of accommodation was possibly one of the biggest limiting factors to the completion of the dispersal. In the Vickers-Armstrongs Quarterly Report for Supermarine in the first Quarter of 1941 it was reported that:

“… great difficulty encountered in transferring skilled men from Southampton because of the impossibility of getting sufficient and suitable housing.”

One solution, employed at the different dispersal areas, was to erect prefabricated housing close to the places of work. For the staff at Hursley a group of approximately eighty temporary prefabricated homes, “hutments”, were constructed on the Hursley Road at Hiltingbury, on the outskirts of Chandlers Ford.

1943 RAF Aerial Photograph showing the Hutments with Hursley Road runnning North-South and Hook Road West-East from the top left to centre.

For the Bell family the Hutments were a lifesaver. Eileen, then a child of four recalled their time at Glebe Cottage and the move to the Hutments:

“[There were] four in our family. Mum, Dad, myself and my brother Leslie and we all lived in one room. But we weren’t there that long. It was months more than years.  ‘till as soon as the hutments were put up. We were the first ones, actually the first ones to move into the hutments. Number 8, which was the last one. On Hook Road as you went down, it was the last one before you came to the bungalows, the built bungalows along there. My father wanted the end one because we had quite a large garden there compared to anybody else. Apart from the fact we were desperate because we were homeless.”

Less than a mile from the requisitioned Supermarine works the “Hutments” were built at the top of the Hocombe Middle plantation, at the junction of Hook, Hocombe and Hursley roads and on the route taken by the works’ buses.

Somewhat isolated the Hutments were only intended to last for ten years but continued in use until the late 1950s. During that time the Hutments quickly developed into a semi-self contained community that lasted into the 1950s.

OS 1:10,000 1949 Map of the Hutments

Eileen recalled that

“… they were cold and it was damp too. They were sort of two layers of asbestos with straw in the middle. On the inside walls there was a sort of a cardboardy stuff, hardboard. I say hardboard, probably didn’t have hardboard in those days, so a sort of thick cardboard. It was very damp and very cold, but I guess we just got on with it I suppose.”

Each “hutment” was built to house two families, each sharing an Anderson Shelter at the end of the garden.

For more on the hutments and the community that grew up there go to “Do you remember the Hutments” , Peter Russell’s personal recollections of growing up there “The Hutments 1950s and My Family” and his excellent two part series:

Hook Road Hutments and My Family by Peter Russell – Part 1

Hook Road Hutments and My Family by Peter Russell – Part 2

There is also Patrick Dee’s daughter’s piece on her family’s time there The Hutments: Could You Help Find Old Neighbours in Chandler’s Ford?

All of these are on the Chandler’sFordToday website.