Buildings 59, 60 and 61 (Officers Mess), Lower Stanton St Quintin, Wiltshire

Description

STANTON ST QUINTIN

1384/0/10024 HULLAVINGTON BARRACKS
01-DEC-05 Buildings 59, 60 and 61 (Officers' Mess)

GV II
Officers' Mess and Single Officers' Quarters. 1935 - 6. A Bulloch, architectural adviser to the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings. Drawing No 2483/36. Bath stone ashlar on brick or block, pantile 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 3 storeys, contains the lounge and other public rooms facing S, with services on the N 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 98 officers, with quarters for 72.

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 3-storey building, which is in 23 bays, the central unit of 11 bays slightly stepped forward, and with raised parapet; the returns are in 6 bays. Most windows are 12-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 3 bays above a 3-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. The back of this range is in a shallow U-plan, with 2-bay arms and a small stack to the internal angles; windows to the back are variously 12-pane or smaller service lights. Attached to the rear outer corners of the range is a 2-storey pavilion in 3 bays, to pyramidal roof, that to the left (W) being the kitchen, and having 2 very lofty stacks near the roof apex.

Each side of the central range a single storey link has 3 pairs of glazed French windows, set to a full-width stone terrace. The 2-storey bedroom wings are practically identical, in 15 x 3 bays, 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 5 segmental dormers with 12-pane sashes, to lead roofs and tile-hung cheeks. The inner faces of the wings have five 12-pane sashes, the a series of smaller service lights, with dormers similarly placed and detailed as to the front slopes. Set across the rear, in alignment with these two pavilions, and linked to them by 5-bay flat-roofed sections, is the dining room, a plain rectangle to a hipped roof and parapets, over 5 large 40-pane arched ashes with radial heads, linked by a plain string and flanked by small glazed doors beneath plain sunk panels, all to a stone terrace on 2 steps. The ends are plain, and window repeat each side of the lobby on the inner side. Low stone walls enclose service yards.

INTERIOR: the principal suite of rooms only was inspected. The entrance lobby and hall have high polished oak panelling, with glazed doors to plain fanlights giving to the long cross-corridor, also with arched openings. The plain plastered ceiling has a moulded cornice. The lobby to the dining room also has polished panelling, and arched sashes to small light wells; wide square-headed openings lead to the dining room, with the 5 large windows on the far side, and a shaped projecting balcony above this entry, with deep set-back gallery. There is a deep coved plaster ceiling on a moulded cornice, a picture rail at arch-soaring height, and a moulded skirting. The major public rooms to the front have deep compartmental plastered ceilings and beams, with glazed doors to the corridor. Two rooms include a bold fire surround with polished overmantel, bolection-mould marble opening and faience tiles, and a smaller room includes an Arts and Crafts style surround in painted softwood, including high mantel and panelled recess, with a copper hood and tiling. At each end of the block is a modest open-well staircase with solid balustrade in plywood, to square newels, and corresponding wall panelling.

HISTORY: 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 S. For such a large building it is handled with simple dignity, embodying to a unique degree the improved architectural quality associated with the post-1934 Expansion Period of the RAF. 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.

Hullavington, which opened on June 6th 1937 as a Flying Training Station, is in every respect the key station most strongly representative of the improved architectural quality characteristic of the air bases developed under the post-1934 expansion of the RAF. Its position in the west of England with other training and maintenance bases also prompted its selection in 1938 as one of series of Aircraft Storage Units for the storage of vital reserves destined for the operational front-line.

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, was a blend of Garden City planning for married quarters, neo-Georgian propriety for the barracks and other domestic buildings, and a watered-down Moderne style for the technical buildings. In contrast to earlier layouts, which the RFAC considered to be too disorderly, an axial layout on Beaux Arts principles directed the overall concept at Hullavington. The facing of the buildings in Cotswold stone was the probable result of consultation with the Wiltshire branch of the Council for the Protection of Rural England.

The Air Ministry's official account ('Works', published in 1956) includes several photographs of the completed base. In line with the RFAC's recommendations, domestic buildings are designed in a broadly 'neo-Georgian' style, using 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. Technical buildings use standard steel casements, with horizontal bars, but again there is meticulous attention to layout and detail, seen for instance in the grouping of rows of lights to a continuous drip course, and the neatly finished flush copings. The influence of the current Art Deco style is particularly evident in the water and boiler house towers, and in some of the interior detail. The Officers' Mess, the largest of the domestic buildings, is set apart from the remainder, near the southern edge of the station and with its own gated entry from a minor public road. The Aircraft Storage Unit (ASU), with its planets of hangars dispersed around the edge of the flying field, was one of a series planned by the Air Ministry in 1936 - and mostly grafted onto Flying Training Schools, as here: in their construction they comprised the most structurally advanced building types erected by the Air Ministry in the period up to 1945, and they also represented in their planning the first move towards the perimeter dispersal of aircraft which became a fundamental element in military airfield design.

(Works (The Royal Air Force Builds for War), 1956 (reprinted by The Stationary Office, 1997; Operations Record Books, PRO AIR 28/1820-1)

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