BUILDING NO 22 (CENTRAL HEATING PLANT)

BUILDING NO 22 (CENTRAL HEATING PLANT), SKIMMINGDISH LANE (SOUTH-WEST)

Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places

Overview

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1391630
Date first listed:: 01-Dec-2005
List Entry Name:: BUILDING NO 22 (CENTRAL HEATING PLANT)
Statutory Address:: BUILDING NO 22 (CENTRAL HEATING PLANT), SKIMMINGDISH LANE (SOUTH-WEST)

The Missing Pieces Project

Share your view of unique places.

Add your contribution

Location

Location of this list entry and nearby places that are also listed. Use our map search to find more listed places.

There is a problem

Use of this mapping is subject to terms and conditions.

This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale.

What is the National Heritage List for England?

The National Heritage List for England is a unique register of our country's most significant historic buildings and sites. The places on the list are protected by law and most are not open to the public.

The list includes:

🏠 Buildings
🏰 Scheduled monuments
🌳 Parks and gardens
⚔️ Battlefields
⚓ Shipwrecks

Find out more about listing

Historic England Archive

Search over 1 million photographs and drawings from the 1850s to the present day using our images archive.

Find Photos

Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1391630
Date first listed:: 01-Dec-2005
List Entry Name:: BUILDING NO 22 (CENTRAL HEATING PLANT)
Statutory Address 1:: BUILDING NO 22 (CENTRAL HEATING PLANT), SKIMMINGDISH LANE (SOUTH-WEST)

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

Location

Statutory Address:: BUILDING NO 22 (CENTRAL HEATING PLANT), SKIMMINGDISH LANE (SOUTH-WEST)

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

County:: Oxfordshire
District:: Cherwell (District Authority)
Parish:: Caversfield
National Grid Reference:: SP 58722 24613

Details

CAVERSFIELD

SP5824 SKIMMINGDISH LANE (SOUTH-WEST) 1714/0/10050 RAF Bicester: Domestic Site 01-DEC-05 Building No 22 (Central Heating Plant)

GV II Central heating plant, with fuel store and garaging. 1939. By the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings, to drawing number 6217/39. Flemish bond brickwork, concrete flat roofs with asphalt.

PLAN: A stark cube of brickwork housing the main plant, from which rises, off-centre to the NE side, a slightly stepped brick shaft with water tanks. To the rear a large enclosure, formerly for coal, contained in high brick walls. This area now has 2 oil storage cylinders, each of 40,000 litres, and a large (later) pair of garages with single-slope roof.

EXTERIOR: The power house has steel casements in 4 lights, with pivoting openings on three sides, set high, and the water tower has narrow lights above a panelled door, in stepped recessed brick jambs and a small flat concrete hood; to the left are 3 narrow lights above a wide doorway with louvres. The tower is T-shaped on plan, with slight stepped recesses at upper levels, in typical Art Deco fashion. The fuel area walls are set on a high rendered plinth. At the time of survey (April 1998) still in original use.

INTERIOR: Not accessible, but basically one large, high space.

HISTORY: This building comprises a key element in the development of this uniquely well-preserved and historically important site. It is a well-preserved example of a building of considerable architectural character, grouped with the contemporary Institute (qv) and 'H' barracks block (qqv) at an angle with and to the N of the earlier buildings. These 1938 type designs, with flat concrete roofs built for protection against incendiary devices, were in a more consciously modern style than earlier Expansion Period designs. They formed part of the Scheme M contracts placed in November 1938.

Bicester is the best-preserved of the bomber bases constructed as the principal arm of Sir Hugh Trenchard's expansion of the RAF from 1923, which was based on the philosophy of offensive deterrence. It retains, better than any other military airbase in Britain, the layout and fabric relating to both pre-1930s military aviation and the development of Britain's strategic bomber force - and the manner in which its expansion reflected domestic political pressures as well as events on the world stage - in the period up to 1939. It was this policy of offensive deterrence that essentially dominated British air power and the RAF's existence as an independent arm of the military in the inter-war period, and continued to determine its shape and direction in the Second World War and afterwards during the Cold War. The grass flying field still survives with its 1939 boundaries largely intact, bounded by a group of bomb stores built in 1938/9 and airfield defences built in the early stages of the Second World War. For much of the Second World War RAF Bicester functioned as an Operational Training Unit, training Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders as well as British air crews for service in Bomber Command. These OTUs, of which Bicester now forms the premier surviving example, fulfilled the critical requirement of enabling bomber crews - once individual members had trained in flying, bombing, gunnery and navigation - to form and train as units. For further historical details see Building 16 (Officers' Quarters and Mess).

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:: 496022
Legacy System:: LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Dobinson, C, Airfield Themes, (1997)
Francis, P , RAF Bicester, (1996)
Francis, P, British Military Airfield Architecture From Airships To The Jet Age, (1996)

Legal

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.