Beech Grove Hall (former Officers' Mess and Quarters), Manby, Lincolnshire

Description

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 19/11/2020

1783/0/10008

MANBY,
MANBY BUSINESS PARK,
Beech Grove Hall (former Officers' Mess and Quarters)

(Formerly listed as Beachgrove Hall (former Officers' Mess and Quarters))

GV
II
Officers' Mess and Single Officers' Quarters. 1937. A Bulloch, architectural adviser to the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings. Drawing No 2483/36. Flemish bond brick with ashlar dressings; plain tile roofs.

PLAN: a complex extended H-plan set out on formal Beaux-Arts lines. The short main axis centred to the principal range passes through an entrance hall to the main dining room set transversely to the rear, and the long cross axis serves the principal reception room, and connects via short link blocks to the double-banked bedroom blocks forming the outer arms of the H. The main range, in three storeys with attic, contains the lounge and other public rooms facing south, with services on the north side of the corridor, and staircases at either end giving access to the bedrooms above. The kitchen and service areas with accommodation flank the dining room to the rear. The bedroom blocks for single officers are double-banked, with service rooms on the inner sides. The Mess provides for 107 officers, with quarters for 84.

EXTERIOR: all windows are wood sashes, with glazing bars, set to flush boxes and voussoirs and with stone sills. The steep hipped roofs rise from a small box of eaves, with some sections emphasised by raised flush parapets and stacks are severely rectangular to flush cappings. There is a very small plinth, and a plain string course above the first floor to the three-storey building, which is in 23 bays, the central unit of eleven bays slightly stepped forward, and with raised parapet; the returns are in six bays. Most windows are twelve-pane, but the ground floor has very large 28-pane units, with narrower 21-pane to bays 7, 10, 14 and 17; all have a keystone taken up to the string course. At first floor there are cantilevered stone balustraded balconies to bays 3/4 and 20/21, also to the central three bays above a three-arched arcade on panelled pilasters and moulded architraves on a full-width stone landing to the set-back paired panelled doors under an interlace fanlight, flanked by arched sashes. Windows to the first floor balconies are extended to 15-pane, and have moulded stone architraves and keystones. Four narrow but deep stacks rise from the roof slope above the central section.

Each side of the central range a single storey link is attached to the accommodation blocks, which all have twelve-pane sashes. These are in two storeys, and present symmetrical five-window hipped blocks to the front. Return elevations have three-window hipped blocks (with central door), projecting forward from nine-window central range, a parapet taken up above the central 5, which includes a 20-pane sash above a pair of doors in moulded architrave. Above the parapet are five segmental dormers with twelve-pane sashes, to lead roofs and tile-hung cheeks.

INTERIOR: not inspected but these were designed with bolection-moulded fireplaces and panelling to the main suite of rooms, and open-well staircases.

HISTORY: an impressive example, on a key aviation site, of a large-scale neo-Georgian officers' mess and quarters, typical of those erected on training airfields during the 1930s. For such a large building it is handled with simple dignity, embodying to an exceptional degree the improved architectural quality associated with the post-1934 Expansion Period of the RAF that resulted from public fears over rearmament and the environmental impact of air bases on the landscape. 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. As is common on RAF bases, the Mess is set somewhat apart from the remainder of the buildings, and also has its own private entrance gates from the minor road to the south.

Manby was one the first generation (Scheme A) of those RAF stations built as a result of the great expansion of the RAF prompted by the rise of Hitler's Germany, although construction did not commence until 1936 and it was not opened until July 1938. It was built as an Armament Training School, and comprised the RAF's principal armament training section at the beginning of the Second World War, training armament officers, bomb aimers, air gunners and armourers with a variety of aircraft ranging from Hawker Hinds to Wellingtons. At the outset of the war it was provided with a decoy airfield at Mablethorpe and used the bombing and gunnery range at Thaddlethorpe. It was later equipped with two paved runways (1,448 and 1,232 yards). The RAF Flying College was formed here in 1949, and the base was closed in 1974.

It ranks with Hullavington in Wiltshire - another Scheme A station - as the most complete and architecturally unified of the stations of the so-called Expansion Period, under way from June 1934. The buildings at Manby reflect a distinct change in the aesthetic quality and design of RAF stations. Against the background of public resistance to rearmament and concerns about the impact of airfields on the countryside, the recently-formed Royal Fine Art Commission advised the Air Ministry on the design of new sites. This consultation resulted in the appointment of a specialist architectural advisor (Mr Archibald Bulloch MRIBA) to its Directorate of Works and Buildings. The buildings erected for much of the Expansion Period were based upon a range of type designs, characterised by a homogeneity of materials and careful control of proportions: a clear distinction was made between the neo-Georgian domestic buildings and the more stridently modern style used for technical buildings. The buildings on the base were designed for the purposes of training, a purpose which allowed a greater formality of planning than purely operational stations, here achieved by the grouping of the principal buildings around a large parade ground. The domestic and administrative buildings - Bulloch designs of 1934-5 - are designed in a broadly neo-Georgian style, and comprise a group of special importance where the recommendations for listing are concentrated. These use timber double-hung sashes, and elevations presented in carefully-considered areas of wall and window, with regularity of layout and the comfortable proportions characteristic of the period: many of these designs, from the barracks blocks to the sergeants mess and the fine instructional block, have not been noted on any other RAF sites of the period. The Officers' Mess, the largest of the domestic buildings, is set apart to the south, with its own driveway, and the married officers' and NCO's quarters to the south-east form a well-preserved group. The technical buildings, grouped around the C-type hangars which front onto the flying field, use standard steel casements, with horizontal bars.

Reasons for Listing

Military Aviation site

External Links

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