ZE7 Lippitts Hill: Office and Chapel Building, Waltham Abbey, Essex

Summary

Office and Chapel building, built 1939-40 by the War Office.

Description

Office and Chapel Block, built in 1939-40 by the War Office.

Materials: a timber-framed, single-storey range with timber rusticated weatherboard cladding, standing on a brick plinth, with a felted, shallow-pitched timber roof and off-centre brick ridge stack. Metal framed casement windows are evident throughout.

Plan: U-shaped in plan.

Exterior: the six-bay, single-storey Office and Chapel Block sits on a brick plinth and has a plank and batten timber door to the recessed centre in the front (east) elevation. Both arms of the U-shaped building have a double pile roof, suggesting two, two-bay huts have been attached to a longer, six bay range. With few exceptions each bay of the west elevation and those to the east are defined by pairs of multi-paned metal-framed windows with a horizontal glazing bars. Other bays and gable ends have similar glazing patterns but some are single rather than double windows.

Interior: the Office and Chapel Block is accessed via a central door in the east elevation. The interior is utilitarian throughout with lined walls and ceilings and a corridor running north to south, providing access to small offices, WCs and locker rooms off each side, as well as one room possibly formerly a chapel, now a workshop. Throughout, there survives 'high waisted' doors of the 1930s, with one panel set above three vertical ones, consistent with other buildings of the same phase on the site. One room retains some stencilling in foliate designs to the ceiling, and a heavy brick stove, thought to be of central European design, suggesting that this room was modified for the use of German prisoners of war, perhaps as a chapel. The north-east room has been subsequently cased internally in bullet-proof material.

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 1:2,500 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 Office and Chapel Building built by the War Office as part of the supporting infrastructure for military personnel serving the ZE7 Lippitts Hill HAA gun emplacement. Other buildings in this group include The Spider Block (NHLE 1390667), Commander's Office (NHLE 1390666), Long Range and Adjoining Officers Accommodation (NHLE 1390668), Officers Accommodation (NHLE1390669), Mess Block (NHLE 1390670) and a K6 Telephone Kiosk (NHLE 1390664) all of which were first listed at Grade II in 2003. The Group also includes the Armoury which is not currently listed but is being considered for listing under the current case.

Reasons for Listing

The Office and Chapel block, one of a group of buildings erected pre-1940 by the War Office as part of the supporting infrastructure for military personnel serving the ZE7 Lippitts Hill Heavy Anti-Aircraft (HAA) gun emplacement is listed for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* As a near complete example of a Second World War office block which survives close to its original form and within its original context, the best preserved anti-aircraft gun site in England;

* For the decorative detailing in the form of foliate stencilling and a heavy brick stove, thought to represent the adaptation of the building by German prisoners of war as a makeshift chapel;

Historic interest:

* As an integral component of one of Britain's premier HAA gun sites of the Second World War, a nationally important military site which retains evidence of continuity and change in the use of the site from the Second World War to the end of the Cold War;

* As a key component of the site which served the first American troops to fire in the defence of London during the Second World War;

Group value:

* For its strong group value with the other accommodation units, the HAA gun emplacement, the AAOR, the Concrete Sculpture of a Man and the Monument to US servicemen which collectively allow a thorough appreciation of the war time operation and chart the subsequent development of the nationally important military site.

External Links

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