31, LEDO ROAD

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

Overview

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1392887
Date first listed:: 01-Dec-2005
List Entry Name:: 31, LEDO ROAD
Statutory Address:: 31, LEDO ROAD

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Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1392887
Date first listed:: 01-Dec-2005
List Entry Name:: 31, LEDO ROAD
Statutory Address 1:: 31, LEDO ROAD

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:: 31, LEDO ROAD

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

County:: Cambridgeshire
District:: South Cambridgeshire (District Authority)
Parish:: Whittlesford
National Grid Reference:: TL 45952 46419

Details

WHITTLESFORD

1767/0/10049 LEDO ROAD 01-DEC-05 West side 31

GV II Married officers' house. 1936-7, to a Group IV design for Squadron Leaders by A Bulloch, architectural advisor to the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings. Drawing No 6533/36. Red cavity brick in Flemish bond, pantile roof and brick stacks.

PLAN: entrance hall, drawing room, study and dining room to ground floor, which could be opened up for functions; dressing room and bedrooms above include servant's room. Single-storey annexe to E with hipped roof, housing heating chamber, WC, larder and store, linked to walled yard with fuel store and tool shed.

EXTERIOR: 2 storeys. All windows are timber sash with glazing-bars, to flush boxes, with brick voussoirs. Garden front to S has canted bay window to left of 4-window range with 12-pane sashes; adjacent to bay window is French window in raised brick architrave. N front, facing drive, has 5-window elevation with 12-pane sashes and central panelled door set in semi-circular arch with tile imposts and brick tympanum, flanked by 9-pane sashes with 3 8-pane sashes above. End and axial stacks.

Interior: original joinery including panelled doors with brass fittings; bolection-moulded fireplace in drawing room; dog-leg stair with moulded handrail.

HISTORY: This is a distinctive design of 1935 by the Air Ministry architect, A Bulloch. Detailing is restrained throughout, but massing, spacing and proportions are carefully considered, in the neo-Georgian style favoured at this period, and influenced by the impact of the Royal Fine Arts Commission, especially though the architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens. By the 1930's, the issue of airbase design had become inextricably bound with that of national identity, from the Moderne styles found in Finland and Italy to the self-consciously traditional style adopted for 1930s German training bases. In Britain, and in contrast to the more stridently modern styles for civil terminal architecture, the planners for the post-1934 expansion of the RAF were required to soften the impact of new bases on the landscape by politicians mindful of public concerns over the issues of rearmament and the pace of environmental change. The Air Ministry's main consultant in these matters was the Royal Fine Arts Commission. The result, for the first generation of bases constructed after 1934 and designed by the Air Ministry's first architect, A Bulloch, was a blend of Garden City planning and architecture for married quarters, neo-Georgian propriety for the barracks and other domestic buildings, and a watered-down Moderne style for the technical buildings.

This is one of a well-preserved group of married officers' houses, set to one side of the domestic site of former RAF Duxford, that 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).

(Paul Francis, Duxford Airfield, report for Imperial War Museum, Duxford, 2001)

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:: 501634
Legacy System:: LBS

Legal

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