"When hostilities ceased many factories  switched from military to commercial production, but the increasing demand for workers was hampered by the housing shortage.    In the Swindon area, homes were urgently needed for key factory workers employed by the GWR Railworks, Vickers, Garrads, Plessey and other local manufacturers.    In response to this national problem, the government started building 'pre-fabs' as cheap temporary homes, and converting living quarters on abandoned airfields and army bases into civilian accommodation.    This was how in November 1946 when RAF Blakehill closed, Cricklade and Wootton Bassett Rural District Council drew up proposals to adapt the Nissen hits on the unoccupied military 'living sites' as temporary housing until new council housing could be built.    In all, at Blakehill, there were six ex RAF living sites.    These consisted of separate groups of half circular, corrugated steel Nissen huts set up in a random fashion (rather than neat rows) on differently shaped compounds around the aerodrome.    In general there were more than thirty huts, plus other ex-military buildings on most of these sites,    Each compound was surrounded by farmers fields on the land that had been requisitioned by the Air Ministry when the airfield was built.     There were about 150 huts suitable for conversion on five of the six sites, at an estimated £241 per hut.   Nissen huts, which were built like a half pipe section, were thirty feet long and sixteen feet wide.    Before conversion they had been sleeping quarters for the WAAF and RAF Personnel, heated by a coke fired stove, and with no internal partitions.    They were lit only by windows in the brick built ends and latrines and washrooms (ablution huts) were in separate buildings outside. "