Description
The building is a former communal surface air raid shelter with an adjoining plant room, dating to the Second World War. It is located at the eastern end of Joss Street in Invergordon.
The building is a brick and concrete structure, with a flat, split-level roof, measuring around 14m in length and around 4m wide. There is an entrance at each end of the southern wall, one leading into the western section, the other into the eastern. Internally, the western 9 metres of the building houses the air raid shelter, while the remaining eastern section houses the plant room. Internally, the shelter roughly follows a standard design for a double shelter, with a single dividing wall splitting the main part of the space lengthways, along which the bases of benches can still be seen. At the eastern end are two smaller rooms, one of which likely housed a chemical toilet while the other held equipment for the shelter. The interior of the former plant room was inaccessible, and it is not clear what features may survive within it.
Statement of Special Interest
The Joss Street air raid shelter and plant room meets the criteria of special architectural or historic interest for the following reasons:
- The design of the shelter, incorporating a plant room into a civil defence building, is unusual, and may reflect the unique needs of this specific location.
- It retains its physical relationship with both the residential properties and the fuel depot that it was constructed to serve.
- The shelter is an extremely rare and reasonably unaltered surviving example of a Second World War communal surface shelter.
It is a tangible link to one of the defining events of the 20th century, the Second World War, and the impact that the conflict had on civilian populations and the Home Front.
Historical development
The Joss Street air raid shelter is likely to have been built in the early part of the Second World War, when the threat of enemy air attack was at its highest. It is difficult to identify a more specific date for the building, as there are no known records of its construction. Ordnance Survey mapping of the area, surveyed in 1946, does not show the shelter, nor does it depict any of the Royal Navy fuel depot for security reasons.
Architectural interest
Design
The design of the building is very simple, prioritising function over form, and there are no notable decorative features in the structure. The concrete and brick used for the building are among the most common building materials for military and civilian structures relating to the Second World War.
The shelter section of the building appears to follow the standard design for a double variant of communal surface shelter, with the two longer spaces creating by the central subdividing wall creating the space for occupants. This design was created with the intent of housing around 50 people to a shelter, however it was easily adaptable to smaller or larger sizes as required, with some examples designed to house up to 200 individuals. The attached plant room is an unusual addition for a shelter and seems to have been linked to the Royal Navy fuel depot to the north, although the precise purpose is unclear.
Setting
The setting of the building has altered very little since the shelter was constructed during the Second World War. The shelter was built in a discrete location at the eastern end of Joss Street, with residential buildings to the south and west and the substantial earthworks of the fuel depot to the north and east forming part of the setting, and this remains the same today.
The survival of the shelter's physical relationship with the surrounding residential properties and the remains of the Royal Navy fuel depot, which it was built to serve, does have some interest in listing terms.
Historic interest
Age and rarity
The building is an extremely rare surviving example of a formerly very common building type. During the Second World War, a wide variety of designs of air raid shelter were constructed and used. Due to the legal requirement placed on local authorities during the war, civil defence buildings and structures of this type would have been very common.
There is no definitive total for the number of air raid shelters constructed within Britain during the Second World War, but they undoubtedly numbered in the millions; records show the manufacture of around 2.5 million of the "Anderson” model of shelter alone, while communal surface shelters like the Joss Street example are believed to have numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Despite the vast numbers of air raid shelters originally built, however, only a tiny fraction of the total now survive, as subsequent demolition, deterioration and clearance have removed most examples. This post-war clearance is particularly pronounced for the communal surface shelters built on public roads, as after the war they became an unnecessary obstruction to road use, and the Joss Street shelter is now the only known surviving example of this type within Scotland.
Social historical interest
The building is a tangible link to the Second World War, and the wide-reaching impacts it had on civilian populations far from the frontlines. By the time of the Second World War, aerial warfare had developed to a level that could directly attack infrastructure, industries, and population centres far behind the front lines of the conflict, and new approaches to defence and protection were needed to combat them. The need for civil defence infrastructure to protect against enemy air attacks on the home front within Scotland marked a major shift from previous late 19th and early 20th century conflicts.
The necessity of civil defence, for the purpose of protecting the civilian population, had been realised following German bombing raids during the First World War, and was brought into harsh relief by the 1937 bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. Following the passing of the Air Raid Precautions Act in 1938 and the Civil Defence Act in 1939, local authorities were required to establish Air Raid Precaution (ARP) schemes for their areas. This included the creation of communal and domestic shelters, installation of warning systems, distribution of gasmasks and other equipment and for the organisation and running of an ARP Warden service.
The significant naval presence in and around Invergordon and the wider Cromarty Firth during both world wars made the area a prime target for potential attack, and in addition to the civil defence needs represented by the Joss Street air raid shelter, the wider defensive needs of the area can also be seen in other sites such as the Sutor coastal batteries (scheduled monuments SM13570 and SM13571).
Association with people or events of national importance
The Joss Street air raid shelter is directly connected to the Second World War, one of the most important and defining events of the 20th century. Extremely common during the war, civilian air raid shelters like this example were nonetheless a visible and necessary element of the conflict within Scotland, as the rapid development of aerial warfare in the early decades of the 20th century created the possibility of direct attack on infrastructure and populations far away from the front lines of the conflict.