Control Tower

Details

WEST MALLING

1156/0/10008 FORMER RAF WEST MALLING 16-APR-04 Control Tower

GV II Control tower. 1939-40, to 1939 Watch Office with Meteorological Section design by Air Ministry's Directorate of Works. Drawing no. 5845/39. Painted brickwork walls, reinforced concrete floors and roof, with asphalt finish.

PLAN: a near-square plan on three floors with wide glazed balconies facing the flying field. The ground floor has the main watch office and pilots' room, forecast and teleprinters, and WCs; at first floor is the main control room backed by the meteorological and signals offices; the rear staircase gives access also to the glazed observation room at second floor level.

EXTERIOR: the original steel casements with horizontal glazing bars have been retained almost throughout, including those to the long observation frontages. At ground floor the front has three large 4-light windows separated by brick piers, under a concrete balcony cantilevered out to semi-circular ends, and with a 'nautical' style steel balustrade in four horizontal bars and handrail to simple uprights; at this level is a continuous multi-light window returned to quadrants at each end, above a low breast wall, and with a deep parapet wall taken up as a balustrade to the top deck, which has a further range of full-width glazing to a set-back observation room. The return walls each have a series of tall casements, linked at the upper level by a 'frieze band' under the cantilevered flat slab with the nautical balustrade continued to the rear to the stair tower. The rear faÎade has a single light each side of the projecting stair tower, with a small bulls-eye above a deep stair light, and small lights on the return.

Later alterations comprise timber-framed and glazed observation room, and extension over rear doorway. The building is flanked at each side by two-bay and three-bay fire tender and flare stores.

INTERIOR: original doors and joinery; solid concrete staircase.

HISTORY: This is the best example of this type of control tower after Swanton Morley. It is the most sophisticated Air Ministry design of the inter-war period both in terms of its planning, with a meteorological section incorporated into the design behind the control room. Its distinctly Art Deco treatment strongly recalls the Bauhaus tradition from which this style was evolved. In the second half of the 1930s, increasing attention was being given to the dispersal and shelter of aircraft from attack, ensuring serviceable landing and take-off areas, and the control of movement: the result was the development of the control tower, from the simple watch office of the 1920s, and the planning from 1938 of the first airfields with runways and perimeter tracks. The development of radio communication, and the increasing need to organise the flying field into different zones for take-off, landing and taxiing, brought with it an acceptance that movement on the airfield needed to be controlled from a single centre: control towers thus evolved from the simple duty pilot's watch office to the tower design of 1934 and integration of traffic control and weather monitoring in the Art Deco horizontality of the Watch Office with Meteorological Section of 1939. The control tower became the most distinctive and instantly recognisable building associated with military airfields, particularly in the Second World War when they served as foci for base personnel as they awaited the return of aircraft from operations.

From 1930 the Maidstone School of Flying used the area as a private landing ground, which was registered as Maidstone airport in 1932. A satellite of Biggin Hill within Fighter Command's strategically critical 11 Group, West Malling was opened as a fighter station in June 1940, although a series of raids in August and September 1940 rendered the airfield unserviceable for much of the Battle of Britain. It reopened in October of that year, although the station was able to accept a full station only in April 1941. It became a nightfighter station at this time, its Bristol Beaufighter pilots including Guy Gibson and Don Parker - both becoming famous names in Bomber Command, the former for his leadership of 617 Squadron in the Dams Raid and other precision attacks. It was later used by Mosquitos and Typhoons in operations against occupied Europe, including the support of 'D' Day, and became the principal station during 'Operation Diver' in 1944, the name given to the defence of the east and south-eastern coasts against the V1 bomb. It is significant, in this context, that there are no other fighter stations associated with 'Operation Diver' that have survived in a sufficiently complete state of preservation to merit listing: the other key sites in the London area - Northolt, Biggin Hill and Kenley - were placed behind the balloon barrage erected for the operation. With the end of the war, West Malling became the main rehabilitation centre for POWs returning from Germany to Britain. The base was put into 'care and maintenance' in August 1960, and was acquired in 1970 by Kent County Council: in 1972 it became a centre for dispossessed Ugandan Asians, and eventually some of the major buildings were adapted for Local Authority use (notably the Officers' Mess and Building 60), whilst others were retained and incorporated as part of a larger commercial park.

(Paul Francis, British Military Airfield Architecture (Sparkford, 1996); RAF Museum, Hendon, drawings collection; RJ Brooks, The 50th Anniversary of RAF West Malling, Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council, 1989; Bruce Barrymore Halpenny, Action Stations 8: Military Airfields of Greater London (Cambridge, 1984), pp.213-7) TQ6773255249

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

492500

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Francis, P, British Military Airfield Architecture From Airships To The Jet Age, (1996)

End of official list entry

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