Nissen hut
A Nissen hut is a prefabricated steel structure originally for military use, especially as barracks, made from a 210° portion of a cylindrical skin of corrugated iron. It was designed during the First World War by the Canadian-American-British engineer and inventor Major Peter Norman Nissen. It was used also extensively during the Second World War and was adapted as the similar Quonset hut in the United States.
Use in Australia[edit]
In Australia, after the war, Nissen huts were erected at many migrant camps around the country.
Most post-Second World War Nissen huts were used by governments. However, there is one block that was built as private housing. Fifty Nissen huts were constructed in Belmont North, a suburb of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. They were designed to provide cheap, ready-made housing for post-war British migrant families.[10] Seventeen of the huts have been demolished over the years, but the remainder have been refurbished, improved and extended and remain popular with their owners. However attempts to have the remaining huts heritage listed in 2009 failed in the face of opposition from some owners.[11]
The story of Western Australia's post-War migrants has been marked with the state heritage-listing of the remaining parts of the former Main Roads Migrant Camp in Narrogin, Western Australia. The camp housed European migrants who had been displaced by the war and resettled in Western Australia, then employed in road construction. The Australian Government worked with the United Nations to accept, resettle and provide employment for many thousands of Europeans after the Second World War.
Immigrants were housed in Nissen huts at Holmesglen, in south east Melbourne until the early 1970s when they were demolished to make way for native parklands. A unique example still exists along nearby High Street Road in Ashwood where the hut is occupied by a bottle shop.
Main Roads was one of three migrant camps set up in Narrogin in the late 1940s and used until the mid-1950s. The camp's conditions were basic, with migrants living in tents and Nissen huts. The three Nissen huts are the only ones to survive. Post-war migrants played a vital role in the development of the state through the construction of state and local government buildings, roads and railways.[12] Today, the place is used by Main Roads Western Australia as its Wheatbelt South Region Headquarters.[13][14]
Nissen huts at Altcar Training Camp, Hightown, Merseyside, still in use in 2019. They are often used as filming locations including the 2019 Russell T Davies drama Years and Years
Nissen hut in Port Lincoln, South Australia, in the process of being converted into the John Calvin Presbyterian Church in the early 1950s. It was demolished in the late 1960s
Derelict Nissen hut interior; the corrugated iron sheets forming the walls and roof are supported by brick partition walls and metal girders
This was probably one of the original buildings at RAF Duxford and was used as the Corporals Club in 1955
Former Main Roads Migrant Camp in Narrogin, Western Australia (exterior)
Former Main Roads Migrant Camp in Narrogin, Western Australia (interior)
