Description

804/0/10074 RAF UXBRIDGE
24-JAN-08 Cinema

GV II

Cinema. By the Royal Engineer Lieutenant J.G.N Clift for the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works. Drawing No. 608/18. Large brick buttresses with reinforced 9 and 4.5in brick walling, externally coated with painted ironite and cement. Welsh slate roof, retained to front porch block and replaced with felt to main block.

Plan: the front-of-house part is a two-storey structure containing on the ground floor, a transformer room, office with staircase, and two vestibules. The first floor housed the projection room, re-winding room and store. The main part of the building is the auditorium which also contains a stage and two retiring rooms. Squash courts sited to rear in lower flat-roofed block.

Exterior: SW front with porch set against blank gable wall with flanking offset buttresses, the brick copings to the gable being swept up to meet at the apex a segmental-pedimented aedicule with central semi-circular arched niche and flanking scrolled brackets. The pedimented porch has brackets to deep eaves, with red tile dressings and timber casements to Diocletian window in tympanum; recessed bays below, of 3 bays to front and single bays to returns, articulated by brick pilasters; 4-light timber casement set in tall central brick panel (with added mid C20 porch below) flanked by single lights above double-leaf doors with bracketed flat hoods; similar casements in dormers; small flat-roofed flanking extensions of mid C20 date. 8-bay return elevations to auditorium, with offset buttresses rising to deep bracketed eaves and with steel casements to upper level; large timber ventilator to centre of auditorium roof; similar treatment to rear gable as to front. Flat-roofed squash courts to rear.

Interior: auditorium has modillion cornice, with deep coving swept up to ceiling with central rose beneath ventilator. Proscenium has Tuscan pilasters to acanthus cornice, the entablature supported by wreathed brackets. Stick baluster stair to viewing gallery in squash courts. Steel-framed roof.

HISTORY: Hillingdon House and its estate at Uxbridge were acquired by Government in early 1915, the Royal Flying Corps' Armament School taking up residence in December 1917 after its use as a hospital for Canadian troops. This building comprises the most impressive of the buildings erected for the RAF's Armament School, which had moved from Perivale to Uxbridge in January 1918, before the formation of the RAF in April of that year. By that time, over 1,200 cadets per month were passing through Uxbridge, which specialised in the important role of training personnel in aerial gunnery and armaments. The new building programme placed great importance - as was by now traditional for military barracks - on the role of sport and recreation, including inter-unit fixtures, film shows, concerts and theatre, in sustaining camp morale. The site's principal function in the inter-war period was the training of recruits, for whom barracks built around an extensive parade ground had been erected in 1928.

The original Clift design featured a Mansard type roof similar to Clift's officers' quarters design at Uxbridge.

(Bruce Barrymore Halpenny, Action Stations 8: Military Airfields of Greater London (Cambridge, 1984), pp.235-43; RAF Museum, Hendon, drawings collection)

Reasons for Listing

EH advice and recommendation accepted

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26671597

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

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  Cork: City and County (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
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  Kent: West and the Weald: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  Essex: Buildings of England Series (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990: Updated version
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  Cornwall (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  Northumberland (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)