Building 6 (Institute and Dining Room)

Details

WHITTLESFORD

1767/0/10018 NORTH CAMP, IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM (FORME 01-DEC-05 R RAF DUXFORD) Building 6 (Institute and Dining Room)

GV II Institute and Dining Room, now used as document store. 1933. By the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings. Drawing No. 852/32. Stretcher bond red brick to cavity walls, concrete floors, slate roof on steel trusses.

PLAN: A long narrow principal block in 2 storeys, with short returned wings to the front, facing the parade ground, and containing the dining areas for airmen (ground floor) and corporals (first floor), with reading rooms and games areas. Entrance at each end to the wings containing large square staircase wells. To the rear, mainly on one floor, but with a 2-storey staff accommodation building, the kitchens, beer cellar, boiler room and general services.

EXTERIOR: All windows are wooden glazing-bar sashes, to brick voussoirs and stone sub-sills. The parade-ground front is symmetrical, with a recessed 5-bay centre having 12-pane above 15-pane sashes, but bays 2 and 5 modified to contain pairs of glazed doors below the 6-pane upper part of the former sashes. The short wing returns have a 12-pane above a pair of flush doors to a plain overlight, in stone pilaster surround with cornice. The outer ends of these wings have a closed pediment with small ventilation slit, above a full-height Portland stone panel containing a 15-pane above an oculus with square grid, all with moulded surrounds, and to a sill on brackets above plain apron panel; these wings also have a small plinth in stone. The return ends are identical, with a closed-pediment gable above 8:12:8-pane sashes above central doors flanked by a small 8-pane, the ground floor openings with moulded stone architraves and cornice. The forward-projecting wings have a 12-pane at first floor, and 4 small lights to the ground floor. The rear wall of this main block has a closed-pediment gable near the left-hand end, with a single 12-pane, then eight 12-pane at first floor, above the various service buildings. Eaves are to a flat soffit and moulded cornice or gutter, and the gable ends have 'rusticated' quoins forced by recessing in 1 in every 5 courses, taken 2 bricks wide. The complex service range has hipped roofs to all units; continuing from the pedimented ends of the 2-storey range are low units with 6 small 12-pane, returned to a central door. Across the rear within these returns is a 2-storey block in 5 bays, flanked by single storey wings, and deep inset entries; there are 6 brick stacks of varied heights, all to brick cappings.

INTERIOR: outer staircases and some joinery remains, otherwise remodelled for storage purposes.

HISTORY: An unusually large complex, built to provide for 200-250 corporals and airmen, but extended in 1942 to cope with a wartime total of more than 2000 airmen and WAAFs; the extension, later demolished, accounts for the additional doors in the centre part of the parade-ground frontage. The layout, proportions and detailing are similar to the contemporary barracks blocks (qqv, Buildings 7, 8, 9, 13), which this building dominates and with which the Institute is grouped. The exterior remains virtually unchanged, and in its careful detailing and proportions is characteristic of the period immediately dating from the Royal Fine Arts Commission's involvement in airfield architecture and design after November 1931. Duxford represents the finest and best-preserved example of a fighter base representative of the period up to 1945 in Britain, with an exceptionally 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. For more details of the history of the site see under entry for the Officers' Mess (Building 45).

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

500319

Legacy System:

LBS

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