THE DERELICT MISCELLANY

HMS Royal Arthur

When is a ship not a ship? When it's a stone frigate of course!

HMS Royal Arthur was one of the Navy's two dozen or so shore-establishments or 'stone frigates' - bases built on land to support the Navy's sea and air operations. Established at Butlin's Skegness Holiday Camp in September 1939, after the war the naval training school was recommissioned as an assessment and mobilisation centre at Corsham in Wiltshire, opening in 1947; despite being 22 miles inland, this station, per tradition, still proudly bore the appelation 'His Majesty's Ship'.

The area around Corsham had been home during the war to several camps (hostel sites) built in 1941-2 to house workers for the large underground aircraft factories and armaments depots at Tunnel and Spring Quarries; Royal Arthur was initially based at Hostel Site 1, Westwells, but moved in 1950 to the larger and better-appointed Hostel Site 10, Kingsmoor.

The Kingsmoor campus was used to train Petty Officers for leadership at the instigation of Lord Louis Mountbatten. Facilities included a gymnasium, lecture rooms, chapel, post office, swimming pool, playing fields and various obstacle courses. The programme was a compulsory six-week course, comprising classroom and fitness training, sports, cross-country runs and assault courses including the Cliff and Chasm ('Cough and Spasm') in which a team of officers hauled a 1cwt barrel of concrete, as the name suggests, up a cliff and then across a chasm; the last week entailed a 60-mile trek over the Black mountains.

Accommodation blocks