Details
WHITTLESFORD
1767/0/10028 NORTH CAMP, IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM (FORME
01-DEC-05 R RAF DUXFORD)
Building 288 (Sergeants' Mess)
GV II
Sergeants' Mess. 1932, extended 1935. By the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings. Drawing No 191/24 and 2897/35. Stretcher bond cavity red brick walls, slate roof on timber trusses.
PLAN: A single-storey building with entrance off-centre, right, and with gabled wings projecting forward at each end. At first the layout had the billiard room to the right of the entrance and the mess, with external eaves stack, to the left; kitchen and services to rear. Later the billiard room was moved to a matching new wing to the left, and new mess room, to accommodate 55 members, attached to the rear, adjacent to the billiard-room wing. Further extensions were made in 1943, when a new officers' mess was constructed; at this time service facilities were also extended, all to the rear, so that the front layout was not altered.
EXTERIOR: Windows are generally timber-bar sashes to stone sills and with slightly cambered brick voussoir heads. On the S, entrance front, the projecting gables have a 12:18:12-pane triple sash to flat voussoir heads, under a flush semicircular arch containing a flush tympanum in herring-bone brickwork. Above these is a small ventilation slit, then the shouldered gable with stone copings. The inner returns have a small 8-pane sash, then the set-back long front has a central square bay with tall 8:12:8-pane sash to brick mullions, and a small 8-pane on the returns, the bay taken up to a coped parapet above eaves level, and with a 1932 date stone. To its left is the external eaves stack, taken up to a bold brick capping, flanked by tall 8-pane sashes. To the right is a pair of panelled doors, the top panel glazed, in a cast stone heavy pilaster surround with simple architrave flat cornice, again flanked by tall sashes. To the left of the entrance is a broad capped ridge stack, and further left the ridge to the added mess of 1935 rises slightly above the earlier lines.
The left return has 12-pane sashes, and the rear gable is as to the front; the right return has a part-hipped outer end under a louvred half-gable, then a lower, set-back wing to a hipped end, with a plank door, and 2 + 1 four-pane sashes. The end of this wing is plain, and continues to a yard-enclosing wall with central entry, beyond which is the tall hipped end of the added mess. At the time of the 1943 extensions a long 'temporary' range was also attached to this part of the building.
INTERIOR: Original doors and joinery. The original layout has been considerably modified (see 'Plan' above), but the major spaces of billiards room, ante-rooms and mess remain intact.
HISTORY: 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).
Although variously modified over a considerable period, this retains in good state the principal front ranges, completing a significant group with the Pilots' Block (qv, Building No 11) and Sick Quarters (qv, Building No 10). In its altered form it also reflects the major changes occurring at Duxford, especially with the increase in numbers of personnel following the arrival of US personnel.
The Air Ministry's official publication on its Works Directorate stated that the Sergeants' Messes were more greatly affected by the development of RAF personnel policy than any other domestic buildings designed and built by the Directorate. They originally catered for sergeants on the basis that 50% were married and so non-users of the Mess, but with the growth in numbers of sergeant pilots, of whom only 10% were entitled to be married, the original areas were found to be inadequate in relation to the number of regular users.
The Royal Air Force Builds for War (A History of Design and Construction in the RAF, 1935 - 1945), 1956 (2nd edition HMSO 1997), p.32.
