The Iris hut is a prefabricated steel structure used by the British military predominantly during the early part of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. They served as

barrack Barracks are usually a group of long buildings built to house military personnel or laborers. The English word originates from the 17th century via French and Italian from an old Spanish word "barraca" ("soldier's tent"), but today barracks are u ...

s, workshops, and storage facilities in World War II

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...

. Iris huts were also used as accommodation in the

tunnels of Gibraltar The tunnels of Gibraltar were constructed over the course of nearly 200 years, principally by the British Army. Within a land area of only , Gibraltar has around of tunnels, nearly twice the length of its entire road network. The first tunnels, ...

, where they were situated in chambers excavated under the

Rock of Gibraltar The Rock of Gibraltar (from the Arabic name Jabel-al-Tariq) is a monolithic limestone promontory located in the British territory of Gibraltar, near the southwestern tip of Europe on the Iberian Peninsula, and near the entrance to the Mediterr ...

Architecture

An Iris hut is constructed of a clamped tubular steel frame with a central entrance. The hut's mode of construction and dimensions are similar to those of the

Romney hut The Romney hut is a prefabricated steel structure used by the British military, developed during World War II to supersede the Iris hut. History At the outbreak of World War II, the British military developed a series of prefabricated huts to ...

, as was its purpose. Both were used to accommodate facilities for which abnormal roof spans were required. On some airfields, two or more Romney or Iris huts would be erected to accommodate large stores and workshops. However, the Iris hut had a major design flaw: it was unable to resist the weight of snow lying on the roof and had a tendency to collapse after snowfalls. For this reason, it was superseded by the Romney hut by 1941.

Present day

Surviving Iris huts are now rare due to their fragility.

Bicester

Six original examples (along with six Romney huts) are still located at the Central Ordnance Depot

Bicester Bicester ( ) is a historical market towngarden town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Cherwell (district), Cherwell district of northeastern Oxfordshire in Southern England that also comprises an Eco-towns, eco town at North Wes ...

, part of the British

Ministry of Defence {{unsourced, date=February 2021 A ministry of defence or defense (see spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is an often-used name for the part of a government responsible for matters of defence, found in states ...

's Logistic Services Bicester facility. The Bicester huts were completed by July 1944, by which time the design had been almost entirely phased out elsewhere. They were needed in connection with

Operation Bolero Operation Bolero was the commonly used reference for the code name of the United States military troop buildup in the United Kingdom during World War II in preparation for the initial cross-channel invasion plan known as Operation Roundup, to be ...

, the build-up of U.S. forces in Britain for the campaign in Europe, which aimed to accommodate 1,446,000 U.S. service personnel on British soil by 30 April 1944. It resulted in "the greatest expansion of military infrastructure ever to occur in British history." The troops were accommodated in wide

Nissen huts A Nissen hut is a prefabricated steel structure for military use, especially as barracks, made from a half-cylindrical skin of corrugated iron. Designed during the First World War by the American-born, Canadian-British engineer and inventor Majo ...

and their stores and workshops in wide Iris huts, manufactured in Britain from billet steel imported from the United States. The huts at Bicester became surplus to requirements following the withdrawal of the bulk of the U.S. forces in early 1946 and most were demolished during the 1960s. It is unclear what the Iris huts were used for, but the presence of ventilated panels suggests that they were used to store flammable goods.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Iris hut Huts Barracks Iron and steel buildings World War II military equipment of the United Kingdom Architecture in the United Kingdom

Architecture

Present day

Bicester

See also

References