MoD Feltham (formerly Feltham Barracks) is a secure military installation in

Feltham Feltham () is a town in West London, England, from Charing Cross. Historically part of Middlesex, it became part of the London Borough of Hounslow in 1965. The parliamentary constituency of Feltham and Heston has been held by Labour Party M ...

Middlesex Middlesex (; abbreviation: Middx) is a historic county in southeast England. Its area is almost entirely within the wider urbanised area of London and mostly within the ceremonial county of Greater London, with small sections in neighbourin ...

History

This land was first acquired by the War Department during the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fig ...

; by 1917 it was serving as an Air Acceptance Park with an aerodrome attached. After the war, in 1922, the

Royal Army Service Corps The Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) was a corps of the British Army responsible for land, coastal and lake transport, air despatch, barracks administration, the Army Fire Service, staffing headquarters' units, supply of food, water, fuel and d ...

(RASC) took over the site and buildings to serve as its Mechanical Transport Depot. The following year Feltham House, on the northern edge of the site, was purchased to serve as an officers' mess. (Believed to have been built in the 1770s for the Villebois family, the house (then known as Feltham Place) passed through several owners, serving for a time as a boys' school before being bought by 'Cabbage King' Alfred Smith in 1897.) It is a

Grade II listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern I ...

with interiors designed or influenced by James Wyatt. It continued in use as an officer's mess through the 20th century (and was extended in the 1960s); however, as of 2018, it is unoccupied and has been placed on the Heritage at Risk Register. By the 1930s barrack blocks were laid out in rows to the south of Feltham House, while large industrial-type sheds to the east and further south were served by a set of tramlines linked to the mainline railway. The easternmost part of the site was (and remains) in use as

playing fields A pitch or a sports ground is an outdoor playing area for various sports. The term ''pitch'' is most commonly used in British English, while the comparable term in American and Canadian English is playing field or sports field. For most sports t ...

. By the time 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 World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

the site was designated No. 1 Vehicle Reserve Depot; it also housed the RASC's Mechanical Transport Stores Depot and Mechanical Transport Heavy Repair Shop, as well as the RASC Driving School. Feltham continued to serve as a Central Vehicle Depot (CVD) and Central Ordnance Depot (COD) of the

Royal Army Ordnance Corps The Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC) was a corps of the British Army. At its renaming as a Royal Corps in 1918 it was both a supply and repair corps. In the supply area it had responsibility for weapons, armoured vehicles and other military equip ...

after the war (the RAOC having taken over responsibility for vehicle storage from the RASC in 1942). In 1962 part of the site was taken over by

military intelligence Military intelligence is a military discipline that uses information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to assist commanders in their decisions. This aim is achieved by providing an assessment of data from ...

as a facility specialising in the gathering and analysis of cartographic data. The closure of CVD Feltham was announced in 1969 and in 1970 COD Feltham was redesignated as an Ordnance Support Unit (OSU). In the 1970s the tramways were removed and a sizeable area to the south of the site was sold for redevelopment. OSU Feltham closed in 1996. In the 21st century the site remained in use as the Defence Geographic Centre (DGC) 'its primary role eingto provide land maps, aeronautical charts, positional information, geo-referenced imagery and digital data in ariousformats for UK defence planning, operations and training'. The Defence

HUMINT Human intelligence (abbreviated HUMINT and pronounced as ''hyoo-mint'') is intelligence gathered by means of interpersonal contact, as opposed to the more technical intelligence gathering disciplines such as signals intelligence (SIGINT), image ...

Organisation (DHO) was also based at Feltham. In 2012 DGC had a (largely civilian) staff of 400; its library included a global collection of over 700,000 maps, charts and atlases. DHO had 350 personnel, drawn from across the three services. In 2016 MOD Feltham was earmarked for disposal by the MOD, with an expected closure date of 2023.

References

{{reflist Barracks in England Installations of the British Army