Oakham Drill Hall

This drill hall with attached administration block and warden's house was built in 1914 to the designs of Captain Baines of the Leicester firm Langley & Baines.

Materials

The building is principally constructed of red brick with stone dressings. The front elevation has timber sash windows, while mainly uPVC windows are fitted to the rear. The administration block, rear block, and warden's house have slate plain-tile roofs, whilst the hall has a replacement corrugated steel roof with acrylic glass rooflights. Internally, the original steel truss roof structure survives in the hall and rear meeting room.

Plan

The building comprises a seven-bay rectangular block containing offices and a mess/clubroom above, with an attached long rectangular block set behind. This rear section houses the drill hall, a mono-pitched meeting hall on the south side, and a warden's house on the north side. The rear section is broadly rectangular in plan, though the warden's house projects slightly to the west. The drill hall runs perpendicular to the administration block, which fronts onto Penn Street.

Exterior

Penn Street Frontage

The frontage facing Penn Street is designed in a formal Wrenaissance style. The central bay features an open pediment and projects slightly beyond the flanking symmetrical bays, with the roof here subtly sweeping down to overhanging eaves. The façade displays neatly articulated brick details, including alternating bands of purple and red brick beneath the ground-floor sill level, rusticated quoins to the corners, a horizontal raised band between the two storeys, and a projecting central door surround with brick and narrow tile bands. Tiled voussoirs appear above all of the original sash windows—6/9 sashes on the ground floor and 6/6 types above.

Crowning the central entrance is a stone segmental arch with a carved keystone detail carrying a neo-Baroque shield motif which prominently features a Rutland horseshoe emblem. The shoulders of the door surround are embellished with carved acanthus leaf and scroll details. A set of original fielded panel double-doors is set back within the projecting entrance, with a multi-paned fanlight above. An original brick chimney survives on the south side of this frontage, but on the north side another has been removed.

Administration Block Side Elevations

The side elevations of the administration block are plain brick ranges, with the raised horizontal brick band continuing around the building and brick quoins to the corners of both sides. On the south side there is a set of three windows set under arched, tiled voussoirs at ground floor level—one original 4/4 sash and two replacement uPVC types—with a further original 6/6 sash window to the first floor. The north side features two replacement windows, the upper part of the original opening on the west side having been blocked, as is also the case with the one window on the ground floor of the west elevation (south side). On the north side of this west elevation two original windows at first-floor level have been blocked. Set against the back of the north side of the administration block, adjoining the drill hall to the rear, is a lean-to storage area. This appears to be an original feature, as it is keyed in with the brickwork here; the quoins of the north-west corner end in line with this feature.

Drill Hall

The drill hall portion of the building to the rear of the administration block is more utilitarian in character than the Penn Street frontage. It consists of a plain brick and rendered single-storey range interspersed with steel posts stretching back and meeting the warden's house. The drill hall is of broadly the same design on the south and north sides, save for a small, square external storage unit in the middle of the south side, added around 1980 (excluded from this listing), and a central set of original wooden double-doors with an inset wicket door flanked by brick piers on the north side. Both sides of the hall feature a set of original wooden-framed, multi-paned windows to the Penn Street (east) end. A set of replacement acrylic glass rooflights on either side of the rear block's roof pitch serve to light the drill hall, distributed evenly across the corrugated steel roof.

Warden's House

The hall adjoins the two-storey warden's house on the north-west side of the hall, which has a hipped, plain-tile, slate roof and a chimney on the south side. An extension has been added to the west side of the house. From map evidence this was carried out after 1930, though probably not long after, presumably prior to the Second World War on the basis of the closely matched materials and design. The later phase of work here was apparently undertaken following fire damage to this part of the building, consistent with the partial replacement of the six upper courses of brickwork on the north-west corner of the original part of the house.

Meeting Hall Block

On the south side of the hall's western end a mono-pitched meeting hall block extends for approximately 10 metres, continuing the roof line of the southern section of the hall and also featuring a replacement corrugated steel roof. The western gable end of this block has a rectangular section of replaced brick, marking the position of a former lean-to kitchen block which was constructed around 1960 and was subsequently demolished and replaced with a raised platform area in 2000 (excluded from this listing). On the south side of the block there is a set of three replacement windows (west side) and to the east there are three blocked windows, this section corresponding with the storage and boiler room area set within the drill hall. Up until around 1960 there was an open passageway between the southern mono-pitched block and the warden's house, though this was filled-in with a flat-roofed extension as part of work conducted in the 1960s (shown as complete in the OS map of 1970). This later corridor is not of special interest and is excluded from this list entry. Except where specifically detailed, all windows in this rear portion of the building are replacement uPVC types.

Interior

Administration Block

The administration block has a vestibule entrance with a flagstone floor which leads to a pair of office rooms to the south and north sides, both with moulded cornices and picture rails. The office room to the right of the vestibule (north) retains an original (blocked) fireplace with moulded surround and a small, original built-in cupboard. The south office retains another blocked fireplace with original moulded surround, and a small toilet with an entrance/storage area with a pair of original fielded panelled doors with brass furnishings and moulded doorframes. Set behind the office rooms are male and female toilets (north and south respectively), both completely modernised.

On the left side, behind the office room (south), is a straight-flight staircase with wrought-iron balustrade, leading to the officers' mess/clubroom. This is open-plan with a screened-off kitchen/servery area, which has modern fittings though is in its original position (as indicated by the original picture rail here, which is retained throughout the room). This area also retains its pair of blocked fireplaces with their original moulded surrounds to the north and south sides, matching the examples found in the office rooms below.

Drill Hall

The drill hall itself is accessed centrally from the vestibule entrance, with the original slatted wooden double doors here flanked by wrought-iron railings either side of the steps leading down to the hall. The drill hall is open to the roof, which retains its original steel truss structure and its tongue-and-groove ceiling panelling. Further tongue-and-groove wall panelling is fitted in the hall to dado level, and original floorboards and cast-iron radiators are retained throughout. Two modern stud wall offices/learning rooms have been added at the south side of the hall.

To the south-west side of the hall is an original storage area (possibly initially serving as an armoury), which probably also contained the boiler room to the west side, from the evidence of the large chimney seen externally. This storage/boiler room area extends approximately one-third of the way along the hall on the south side, leaving the north side open its entire length—approximately 35 metres. The length of this part of the hall was required in the design to allow the hall to double as a rifle range. This secondary function of the drill hall is testified to by the surviving target winch mechanism, consisting of a wheel winch, wall brackets, and runner wheels along all of the steel trusses on the north side of the hall. This was designed to allow the positions of rope-suspended targets to be adjusted from the firing end of the range (east side).

Warden's House

To the west of the hall, the warden's house retains three distinct rooms on the ground floor—two storage areas and a central meeting space—along with an entrance area and, set against the north wall, an original timber newel staircase. Three further rooms (originally bedrooms) are situated on the first floor. With the exception of the staircase, it appears that no other original interior features are retained in the former warden's house, this in line with the house's conversion from residential use in the 1960s as part of the same phase of work which included the building of the covered corridor which adjoins the house with the drill hall and block to the south.

Meeting Room

To the south of the warden's house is a large meeting room with an inserted central sliding screen. This room occupies the mono-pitched block which projects to the west of the drill hall. This probably originally served as a meeting hall, which was, as it remains, designed to be distinct from the drill hall. More recently the room has been used as a dining area, a purpose served by the construction of a small lean-to kitchen against the west gable end which was subsequently demolished in 2000, though the blocked doorway in the west wall demonstrates where this would have been. The room now has a suspended false-ceiling obscuring the pitch of the roof, though part of the steel truss structure can be noted at eaves level on the south wall.

Connecting the meeting room and the warden's house is the 1960s flat-roofed corridor, built between the external walls of the structures to the north and south (excluded from this listing). Two blocked windows and one inserted entrance to the north (former warden's house) can be noted here, presumably forming part of the same phase of work. At the east end of the corridor there are a set of steps up to a replacement door which connects with the drill hall.

Exclusions

In accordance with section 1.5A of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, certain later additions to the Oakham drill hall complex are excluded from this listing. The excluded elements are the inserted corridor between the rear meeting room and the former warden's house, the raised concrete platform, steps and railings to the west of the rear meeting room, and also the external boiler store attached to the south side of the hall.