Lippitts Hill: Anti-Aircraft Operations Room (Bunker), Waltham Abbey, Essex

Summary

Anti-Aircraft Operations Room built in about 1951 for the War Office to a design drawn up by the Ministry of Works.

Description

An Anti-Aircraft Operations Room built around 1951 for the War Office to a design drawn up by the Ministry of Works.

Materials: it is built of reinforced concrete, fitted with steel blast doors and ventilators

Plan: it is square in plan and comprises a two-storey semi-sunken reinforced concrete structure with a central operations/plotting room surrounded on both floors by a circulating corridor, with control cabins, offices, communications rooms, plant rooms, latrines and dormitories.

Exterior: since the building was designed to resist the effects of a blast, (one of the effects of nuclear explosion, but might also have been built to resist the effects from conventional bombs too) there are no windows and the only openings in the structure are the two entrances, ventilator grilles, the stand-by generator exhaust and a protruding ventilation flue on the roof above the plant rooms. The main entrance situated centrally in the north-west elevation is at ground level, as is the second entrance in the south-east elevation. The two entrances have double steel blast-doors that are protected by open-sided concrete blast wall porches.

Interior: it is entered at the upper-floor level in the north-west elevation and the entrance leads into a lobby that functioned as the reception/security room. A dog-leg circulatory corridor gives access to a number of rooms built around the centrally positioned full height former operations room. All of these rooms, except the boiler, air conditioning, and generator rooms have been given different functions over time; their original functions included the tactical radar control room, radio-telephony room, telephone-frame room, and rest rooms. The well of the operations room is entered from the circulatory corridor by two doorways on opposing sides of the room. It is overlooked by viewing galleries at first floor level, supported on plain tubular steel columns. The galleries are accessed from the upper floor, and on both sides are work stations which retain their curving anti-reflection Perspex windows. The blank wall retains a full width blackboard which originally had situation tote and map boards displayed on it.

The upper floor corridor is accessed externally from both the north-west and south-east entrances, and internally from the lower floor by a number of stairways. As with the lower-floor, a series of rooms surround the operations room; these are likely to include latrines, rest rooms, a NAFFI, civil servants’ room, switchboard, and various offices. Due to the nature of its current use as a secure store, access was not possible to all areas but it appears that most of the rooms on both floors retain their original plain wooden doors, timber framed internal hatches and kiosk window within the reception area. The original box ducting for the ventilation system remains intact throughout. The original air conditioning plant and filtration system also appears to be intact.

History

Until just before the Second World War the site of Lippitts Hill, currently a Police Training Camp, was a rural setting of open fields bordered by the Owl public house and Pipers Farm on the east side. The 1882 1:2500 Ordnance Survey map shows a series of enclosed medieval fields on the site. By January 1940 a Heavy Anti-Aircraft battery known as ZE7 Lippitts Hill had been constructed to guard the eastern approaches of London. War Office documents record that the battery was operational in January 1940, and by January 1943 the battery was manned by American troops under the command of Major M F J Emanuel. In March 1944 Battery B, 184th Anti-Aircraft Artillery, equipped with Mark 1, 90mm guns, became the first American crew to fire in the defence of London.

In late 1944, the Americans moved to France and the site was converted by the British into a Prisoner of War camp. A reminder of this phase of use still exists on site today in the form of a concrete sculpture of a man carved by prisoner Rudi Weber in 1946 (NHLE 1390665). The Prisoner of War camp was closed in 1948. Sometime in 1951, or shortly afterwards, a Cold War Anti-Aircraft Operation Room (AAOR) was built on the site. It acted as a control centre for a number of anti-aircraft guns protecting the north of London. By 1956, with the advent of high flying jet bombers and evolving missile technology this role was obsolete and the system was abandoned.

In 1960, the site became a Metropolitan Police Training Area, a function retained until 2003. Following the murder of three police officers in West London in 1966, it was used as a centre for training police officers in the use of guns, although the construction of a new, pistol firing range was not approved until 1973. From 1976 Lippitts Hill became a base for police helicopters, which were loaned from the Army and operated over London. However, in 1980, faced by a change in flight requirements, the Metropolitan Police purchased their own aircraft, and in November that year, the Metropolitan Police Air Support Unit was officially launched and based at Lippitts Hill. Changes to the Metropolitan Police area in 2000 placed Lippitts Hill, and the surrounding area under Essex Police. The helicopter unit joined the National Police Air Service (NPAS) in 2014.

The subject of this case is the Anti-Aircraft Operation Room (AAOR), which is currently used as a secure store. AAORs were integral to the United Kingdom’s anti-aircraft defences during the early 1950s and are a physical representation of early Cold War defence based upon the command and control experience gained during the Second World War. Thirty-two gun defended areas (GDA) were established in the United Kingdom, of which 23 were in England. Each GDA was commanded by an anti-aircraft operations room that controlled the automated gun sites built around the periphery of major conurbations, ports, and centres of armament production. It was an integrated defence system designed to counter the threat posed by manned Soviet bombers carrying free-fall atomic bombs. By the mid-1950s, advancing technology and the threat of long-range ballistic missiles, rendered the system obsolete. Government policy shifted from one of ‘point-defence’ to one of nuclear deterrent, and following the publication of the 1956 Defence White Paper that announced the change in policy, Anti-Aircraft Command was abolished.

The former Anti-Aircraft Operations Room (AAOR) at Lippitts Hill, Essex was one of 20 purpose-built examples constructed for the Royal Artillery between 1948 and 1951. The operations room received long-range radar reports of the approach of hostile aircraft from the RAF’s Master Radar Stations and tracked the targets before they were allocated to the automated gun sites within their GDA. However, their role was short lived, and by 1956, with the advent of high flying jet bombers and evolving missile technology this role was obsolete and the system was abandoned.

Following the abolition of Anti-Aircraft Command the bunker at Lippitts Hill was acquired along with the rest of the site by the Metropolitan Police as a training facility, a function retained until 2003. Currently (2017) it is used as a secure store.

Reasons for Listing

Former Anti-aircraft Operations Room, built between 1948 and 1951, is Listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Historic interest:
* it represents the early transition of Cold War British defence policy developing from Second World War practices, but taking into account the use of jet aircraft and atomic bombs;
* as a rare survival, being one of only three Anti-Aircraft Operations Rooms remaining in Essex and one of only 13 purpose built AAORs remaining in England.

Architectural interest:
* as a building which expresses through its monumental and robust form the threat posed by the atomic bomb and the necessary measures to protect its occupants from the effects of nuclear attack. The plan illustrates the needs and functions of the tactical command of radar controlled anti-aircraft defences, as envisaged during the late 1940s;
* as a substantially intact semi-sunken anti-aircraft operations room which has experienced only minor alteration since being built, with good survival of original internal fittings and fixtures including the original air filtration plant and standby generators.

Group Value:
* for its strong group value with the original accommodation units, the Heavy Anti-Aircraft gun emplacement, prisoner of war huts and sculpture which together allow a thorough appreciation of the war time operation and chart the subsequent development of the military site.

External Links

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