Three score years and ten

New leaves unfold in front of a relic from World War 2. It's a Nissen hut, still standing 70 years after it was erected here to act as a dormitory (most likely) for the servicemen operating the coastal look-out and battery on the cliffs nearby.

It still has its reinforced glass windows and some of the tarred covering for its wooden ends. The rest of it is made of corrugated steel formed into a half-cylinder and set on a concrete base. These huts were the first prefabricated structures. They were invented during the WW1 and named after the inventor, a major in the Royal Engineers. The hut was economical and very portable: the prefabricated sections could be transported in a standard army truck and erected by six men in four hours. They were used in huge numbers in both World Wars, mainly for housing soldiers or construction workers or as bomb stores. They had their downside:

" Twelve men lived in each Nissen, so tightly packed together that the shelves for their foot lockers were cantilevered over their beds, and every night the rats would gallop up and down the shelves like horses." (From 'Aphrodite: Desperate Mission' by Jack Olsen)

After WW2 Nissen huts became homes for bombed-out families, many of whom lived in them until the 60s and often remembered them with affection, although they were viewed as a blot on the landscape. They have been used for a variety of other purposes too - chapels, theatres, agricultural stores, and garden sheds like this one. A few are being used as homes again; the design has low environmental impact and, with appropriate insulation, is cheap to run and maintain.

I don't know what will happen to this one - I'd love to own it but I suspect it's no longer fit to be taken down and re-erected.