Officers' Mess and Single Officers' Quarters (Building 10-11) at former RAF West Raynham, Helhoughton, Norfolk

Summary

Former officers’ mess and single officers’ quarters, built in 1937-1938 to a design by JH Binge, based on an original 1934 design for such buildings by Archibald Bulloch FRIBA, architectural adviser to the Air Ministry’s Directorate of Works and Buildings, with later alterations and additions.

Description

MATERIALS: of fair-faced brick, which bears the remains of camouflage paint in places, with pantile roofs and brick stacks.

PLAN: the building, which faces south, stands on an east to west alignment and has a complex, wide, extended H-plan. The horizontal axis of the H consists of a single lateral corridor which is centred on the building’s principal range (the mess proper) and divides the public rooms on the south side from the kitchen wing and service rooms on the north side. The corridor then runs continuously via single-storey link blocks to two-storey accommodation wings which form the outer arms of the H.

The main mess range is of a tall single storey and accommodates a central entrance hall along with a large ante-room (or sitting room), a billiard room and a combined card room and writing room, all on the south side of the corridor, while the dining room (the largest room in the block) is set transversely on the corridor’s north side. The remainder of the rear element to the north of the corridor is occupied by the kitchen and its associated ancillary facilities, and by offices, lavatories and storerooms for provisions. Intermixed with the offices and service areas are some domestic rooms for mess staff, with dormitories for live-in servants’ placed above the mess office and scullery in a two-storey range at the rear. The two-storey accommodation wings have central spine corridors off which are individual rooms for junior officers, twin-rooms for officers of the rank of Squadron Leader or above, along with bathrooms, lavatories and service rooms. On the north side of the western link corridor there is a former Nissen hut which was placed here in the late C20 to accommodate a lounge bar.

EXTERIOR: all windows are double-hung wood sashes, with glazing bars, set to flush boxes with gauged brick heads and concrete sills to the ground floor and flat heads and concrete sills to the first floor. All roofs are hipped, with parapets to the main range and the rear dining room and rear two-storey service wing. Most ground-floor windows and doorways were boarded up in the early C21 for security reasons.

The principal elevation of the mess range, which faces south, is of 11 symmetrical bays of which the centre three bays project slightly with a raised parapet to form a round-arched entrance loggia with square columns and two rows of brick headers around the heads. It gives access to three corresponding round-arched doorways, again with two rows of brick headers to the heads, all with French windows and radial fanlights. Above, two rectangular stacks with flush concrete caps rise from the ridge in line at either end of the porch. All the other bays have tall, twelve-over-sixteen sashes, while both returns have a further two identical windows.

The central range is attached to the flanking accommodation wings by three-bay corridor links with French windows.

The two-storey accommodation wings are largely identical, in 15 x 3 bays. The three-bay entrance fronts have central round-arched entrance doors with half-glazed wooden doors giving access to small vestibules with round-headed, multi-pane, wooden doors to the spine corridors. All the other bays are lit by six-over-six sashes. The 15-bay outer faces have six-over-six sashes throughout while the inner faces have a more varied fenestration pattern, including six-over-six sashes to the bedrooms and a series of smaller, four-over-two service lights to the lavatories and bathrooms and large nine-over-nine staircase windows. The three-bay rear elevations have six-over-six sashes to all but the central first-floor bay which has a later-C20 fire-escape door opening onto a spiral staircase.

Projecting at the centre of the rear of the main range is a two-storey wing with a hipped roof with a sprocketed eaves. Originally housing a mess office and scullery on the ground floor and dormitories for live-in servants’ above, it is of three bays. The centre bay, which projects with a hipped roof with a sprocketed eaves, has a flat-headed doorway with a round-headed relieving arch, above which is a six-over-six sash. The two flanking bays have six-over-six sashes to the ground floor and two-over-four sashes to the first floor. Projecting to its right and left respectively, and linked to it by single-storey flat-roofed ranges, is a two-storey service wing, with a small, single-storey range adjoining its north side, and a tall dining room. The latter is of 5 x 2 bays, with twelve-over-sixteen sashes to each bay on its north and east sides; its south side adjoins the lateral corridor and its west side connects with the kitchen.

INTERIOR: the loggia at the centre of the mess range opens into a large entrance hall joined at either end by an east-west aligned lateral corridor with paired multi-pane doors. The hall has very shallow semi-circular recesses on the east and west walls and three recesses with semi-circular fanlights on the rear (north) wall. The walls are lined with plywood panelling which was originally designed to imitate oak but has now been painted. The hall is flanked on the east side by a large ante-room (or sitting room) and on the west side by a billiard room and a combined card and writing room. On the north side of the lateral corridor, placed at a right angle to the main range, is a large dining room. All these rooms are in a restrained Georgian style with tall ceilings, those in the ante room (or sitting room) and dining room being of shallow barrel vaults, with low plywood dados imitating oak, plain skirting boards, panelled walls, moulded cornices and paired multi-pane doors in moulded architraves. In the billiard room there is a stone fireplace flanked by two alcoves, while the ante room has a plywood panelled fireplace.

The flanking accommodation wings are largely identical with bedrooms, bathrooms, toilets, box rooms, drying rooms and stewards rooms arranged on either side of central spine corridors. There are two types of bedroom arrangement in both wings, a combined bedroom and sitting room for junior officers and a bedroom with a separate sitting room for senior officers. In the bedrooms there are built-in wardrobes in every room, although the accompanying wash basins have largely been vandalised, along with coat racks, picture rails, skirting boards and pelmets. All of the original fireplaces in the sitting rooms have been removed and the openings blocked up, while the doors are later-C20 replacements as is the sanitary ware in the bathrooms, showers and lavatories. There are two staircases: one for the officers which is a dog-leg stair with a closed string, square newel post and stick balusters supporting a moulded handrail; and a much plainer one for servants with metal stick balusters supporting a wooden handrail.

History

Construction of RAF West Raynham commenced in 1936, as part of the RAF expansion scheme, and officially opened in April 1939. As built, the site conformed to the typical layout of the 'Expansion Period' aerodrome, consisting of a roughly rectangular grass surfaced landing ground with runways in triangular plan, with the technical site, hangars and accommodation blocks grouped close together at the north-west corner; bomb stores were located to the south-east.

Towards the end of the Second World War, the base was identified as the location for the Central Fighter Establishment . For flying control, the construction of a new Very Heavy Bomber (VHB) control tower was specified. Other work included a cannon test butt, additional officers’ single quarters, technical buildings and supporting infrastructure.

Post-war, RAF West Raynham became the RAF's premier fighter development station. The main roles of the Central Fighter Establishment included the development of fighter tactics and aircrew training. The station maintained both an operational and training role until its closure. From the mid-1960s it also accommodated Bloodhound Mk II surface to air guided missiles, located within its own compound on the East side of the airfield. In 1983, it became the main centre for training operators of Rapier, a short-range air defence missile system, and home to units responsible for this system.

The station closed in 1994, although the Ministry of Defence did not dispose of it until 2006. Most of the Bloodhound Missile site has been cleared. The VHB Control Tower was listed at Grade II in 2012 and later converted to a dwelling. Part of the site was converted to a business park and a solar farm has been laid out across most of the flying field.

Between 1934 and 1939 all new operational as well as some older RAF stations were equipped with an officers' mess designed by the architect Archibald Bulloch, a Fellow of the RIBA. Bulloch had been seconded from the Ministry of Works to the Air Ministry under the Director of Works and Buildings (DWB) in October 1934 as its chief architectural adviser of the new RAF Expansion Programme. Bulloch set to work quickly on drafting new designs, or perhaps revising those already produced by others, and by 12 November a core repertoire of buildings had been developed with a homogenous architectural quality, with one style for hangars and technical buildings and a second, neo-Georgian style, for domestic and administrative structures. His idea for the officers’ mess, the central element of the officers’ married quarter estate and recreational facilities, was to create a standard type design which would include three sizes of mess and three sizes of single officers’ quarters dependent on the number of officers that were originally planned for the station and the class of aircraft that were to be based there. Bulloch’s three mess types were: (i) Type 'A', mainly for Fighter Aerodromes, which had 26 to 35 officers in the mess; (ii) Type 'B', chiefly for Fighter and Medium Bomber Stations, which had 36 to 45 officers in the mess; and (iii) Type 'C', Heavy Bomber & Army Co-operation Stations, which had 46 to 55 officers in the mess. The West Raynham mess is the Type ‘B’ mess (protected roof design) which, conforming to DWB drawing numbers 570-572/37, was designed by JH Binge ARIBA, based on Bulloch's earlier standard design of 1934. As with Bulloch’s original plans, the complex incorporated a central element which contained the pubic mess facilities, including a billiard room, card writing room, ante-room, (or sitting room), dining room and kitchen area, while officers (married or single during the Second World War) were accommodated within two wings positioned on each side of the mess block (drawing numbers 11438/39). Designed to sleep 26 officers and a number of servants, officers of junior rank had a single bedroom while the ranks of Squadron Leader or above had an additional sitting room. The complex was therefore designed on the internal dispersal principle whereby the central element, the dining room and recreational facilities, was separated from the accommodation wings by lengths of corridors. The rational being to localise the effects of damage by a single bomb dropped by an enemy aircraft.

In 1939, the accommodation wings were extended to the north (rear), and internal modernisation, primarily to the bathroom and toilet facilities in the living accommodation, took place during the later C20.

A reclaimed Nissen hut was also added to the complex, probably in the 1980s, for use as a lounge bar.

Reasons for Listing

The former officers' mess and single officers' quarters at RAF West Raynham, built in 1937-1938 to a design by JH Binge, but based on an original 1934 design by Archibald Bulloch FRIBA, architectural adviser to the Air Ministry’s Directorate of Works and Buildings, with later alterations and additions, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* it has a fine neo-Georgian composition with carefully judged proportions and good quality building materials that survives substantially intact;
* the internal public spaces display the spatial quality and understated refinement typical of the neo-Georgian idiom;
* the original layout and fixtures and fittings of the principal rooms in the mess range and living accommodation are well preserved;
* as planned in accordance with the principles of the Garden City movement, it still retains its immediate contemporary setting, character and relationship to the wider airfield site, which gives an important and well-preserved context to the building.

Historic interest:

* it is a well-preserved example of its type, encapsulating the aims of the RAFs post-1934 expansion period in the lead up to the Second World War;
* for its continual use during the entire period of the Second World War and Cold War.

Group value:

* for its contribution to the overall significance of RAF West Raynham as one of the best-preserved RAF expansion scheme bomber bases, retaining the layout and fabric relating to both 1930s military aviation and the development of Britain's strategic bomber force;
* for its strong functional and historic relationship with the surviving airfield buildings many of which are Listed at Grade II.

External Links

Historic England Listing

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.