Details
785/0/10082 A233 (WEST SIDE) FORMER RAF BIGGIN HILL
01-DEC-05 Memorial Chapel
GV II
Memorial chapel to airmen lost whilst flying from Biggin Hill in WWII. Consecrated 1951, architect W Wylton Todd ARIBA. Red brickwork in Flemish bond, clay Roman tile roof on steel trusses.
PLAN: A wide unaisled nave with sanctuary entered through a slightly narrower ante-room or narthex, both these gabled, the nave at a higher level. To the right (S) is an attached oblong campanile over the small entrance lobby, and beyond this is a flat-roofed sacristy. On the opposite (N) side a flat roofed set back link, formerly vestry, and a large gabled chapel, of later build.
EXTERIOR: The whole building is neatly detailed in brick with tiles, sills and with a continuous brick offset plinth. The W end, facing the road, is gabled, with a tall casement under a half-brick arch with tympanum in herring-bone brick, all set to a recessed blind arched panel, with a tile sill across the bottom. Roof tiles are brought to a close-cut eaves, carried out to flush moulded stone kneelers. Below the main panel is a panel set flush, and inscribed: 'This stone was laid on 25th July 1951 by Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding GCB GCVO CMG'. The returns each side have two tall casements, detailed as for the nave. The tower is in plain brickwork, with a set-back top stage, containing to each face a louvred opening, rectangular to the sides, and arched to front and rear, the ridge of the gabled roof parallel with the main roof. The W face has an open clock face; the main entrance is an arched opening in three recessed orders to a pair of framed diagonally boarded doors. To the right of the tower is the flat-roofed vestry, with triple steel casements to brick piers on the W and S sides. Left of the main gable is a similar flat-roofed unit, including triple light and arched doorway, now acting as a corridor link to the later chapel. The nave is a plain gabled rectangle with 5 tall oblong steel casements each side, and the blank E end, with verge and kneelers as to the W, and with a broad recessed blind panel to tiled sill. The large chapel to the N is detailed in a more complex way; to the W is an arched doorway in recessed brick orders to half brick voussoirs and a pair of diagonally boarded doors, within a recessed panel including splayed jambs, taken to elaborate kneelers and eaves in three brick-on-edge courses. In the gable is an oculus with double half-brick voussoirs. The returned side has blank recessed panels with a small vertical light. The E end has a sunk panel with elaborate quoins and to a weathered plinth, and a complex 'frieze' with prominent lead dressings.
INTERIOR: The ante-room or narthex has a plain parquet floor, unpainted walls in three bays with internal brick piers, and a fibre-boarded ceiling. This links through wide doors to the 6-bay nave, also in unpainted brick with internal piers, the floor in square laminated wood blocks, made from aircraft propellers, and with a near-flat ceiling in three facets. At the E end, in the simple sanctuary, is a broad memorial record panel; Squadron losses include Polish, East Indies, French, Dutch, RCAF and RZNA names.
FITTINGS: In addition to the memorial reredos, there is a fine lectern, a stainless steel font with Y-shaped base, and simple benches. Windows each side of the nave all contain memorial stained glass.
HISTORY: This is an elegant little building, a simple and relatively austere version of a Lombardic Early Christian church, that stands as a memorial to those who lost their lives serving from Biggin Hill.
Following the destruction by fire of a memorial chapel (converted from a hut in 1943 and dedicated to St George) in 1946, and consideration of whether to convert the bomb-damaged operations room into a chapel, architects from the Air Ministry Works Directorate (A Beasley, WS Harper and GA Williams) were commissioned to design a simple building in brick and tile, funded through a public appeal for (in Churchill's words) 'a permanent shrine of remembrance') backed by Churchill himself as well as friends and relatives of aircrew who had died in action. The chapel was constructed on the site of one of the hangars destroyed in 1940: Lord Dowding laid the foundation stone in July 1951, and it was opened and dedicated on 10 November 1951. Hugh Easton, the designer of the RAF Memorial Window in Westminster Abbey, designed twelve stained glass windows for the chapel, each with the winged spirit of a young pilot embracing in his arms a badge. The west window was installed in 1981 and four other windows in St George's Room installed by Goddard and Gibbs in 1985 to commemmorate the role of ground support. The memorial tablet records the names of airmen lost from Biggin Hill, and illustrates the large number of nations whose pilots used the base.
Biggin Hill acquired a reputation as the most famous fighter station in the world, primarily through its associations with the Battle of Britain, the first time in history that a nation had retained its freedom and independence through air power. It was developed as a key fighter station in the inter-war period, playing a critical role in the development of the air defence system - based on radar - that played a critical role in the Second World War. Of all the sites which became involved in The Battle of Britain, none have greater resonance in the popular imagination than those of the sector airfields within these Groups which bore the brunt of the Luftwaffe onslaught and, in Churchill's words, 'on whose organisation and combination the whole fighting power of our Air Force at this moment depended'. It was 11 Group, commanded by Air Vice Marshall Keith Park from his underground headquarters at RAF Uxbridge, which occupied the front line in this battle, with its 'nerve centre' sector stations at Northolt, North Weald, Biggin Hill, Tangmere, Debden and Hornchurch taking some of the most sustained attacks of the battle, especially between 24 August and 6 September when these airfields and later aircraft factories became the Luftwaffe's prime targets.
For further details of the history of the site, see description for Station Headquarters.
This List entry has been amended to add sources for War Memorials Online and the War Memorials Register. These sources were not used in the compilation of this List entry but are added here as a guide for further reading, 16 June 2017.
