Building 61 (Station Offices)

Details

DUXFORD

1767/0/10039 SOUTH CAMP, IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM (FORME 01-DEC-05 R RAF DUXFORD) Building 61 (Station Offices)

GV II Station offices. Dated 1933. By the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings. Drawing No 352/30. Stretcher bond brickwork, reinforced concrete floors, slate roof.

PLAN: Central hall and staircase to corridor and double-banked offices to each floor. A symmetrical 2-storey rectangular hipped range with short central T-arm to rear with flat roof, continued in one storey with a double hipped unit to a central valley. Original accommodation included for the Commanding Officer, engineer office and clerks, also accounts section, waiting and orderly rooms, lecture room and library.

EXTERIOR: 2 storeys. 9-window front. Windows are all wooden sash in reveals to slightly cambered brick voussoir heads and concrete sub-sills; the principal windows have a 6-pane upper and plate glass lower sash. The front has three central bays slightly set forward, with a parapet or blocking-course carried above the eaves by approx 1m. This section has 3 sashes above a central pair of part-glazed doors in a stone pilaster surround with heavy flat entablature on brackets, with a sash each side. To each side are 3 further bays, with two close-set sashes on the short returns. A fascia and soffit eaves to the principal block is continued across the central section with its raised blocking. Centred to the ridge is a square louvred turret on a flared lead-clad apron, and with a square lead cupola with pinnacle. The central blocking carried a flagstaff. The back has 3 over one sashes each side of the centre section with an external square boiler stack and a small window, with a large sash at each level to the S return, and modified sash and 2 doors on a raised landing to the N. The low doubled wing has a slightly lower outer section, with 4 + 1 sashes to the S, and five smaller 4-pane to the N, plus door and overlight. The end return has 2 sashes and a door. There is a small roof vent.

INTERIOR: original joinery and doors, with dog-leg staircase.

HISTORY: Duxford is the finest and best-preserved example of a fighter base representative of the period up to 1945 in Britain, with a uniquely complete group of First World War technical buildings in addition to technical and domestic buildings typical of both inter-war Expansion Periods of the RAF. It also has important associations with the Battle of Britain and the American fighter support for the Eighth Air Force. See descriptions of the aircraft hangars for further historical details.

This is a typical but unusually little-altered example of the Station HQ buildings designed under the first phase of the inter-war expansion of the RAF, that commenced from 1923 under the leadership of Sir Hugh Trenchard. Its symmetrical style is directly related to barracks architecture of the late nineteenth century. It is sited immediately opposite the Guardhouse (Building 62, qv), with which it shares the use of a pale yellow brick.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

496002

Legacy System:

LBS

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