Description

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)

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26672087

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Hertfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  [(Cumberland and Westmorland)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1967)
• 
  Huddersfield in 50 Buildings
• 
  Maintaining and Repairing Old Houses: A Guide to Conservation, Sustainability and Economy
• 
  Central Leinster: Kildare, Laois and Offaly (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
• 
  London 3: North West: North West v. 3 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)