Beech Grove Hall (former Officers' Mess and Quarters)

Beech Grove Hall (former Officers' Mess and Quarters)

An Officers' Mess and Single Officers' Quarters built in 1937, designed by A Bulloch, architectural adviser to the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings, with Drawing No 2483/36. The building is constructed in Flemish bond brick with ashlar dressings and plain tile roofs.

The plan follows a complex extended H-shape set out on formal Beaux-Arts lines. The short main axis passes through an entrance hall to the main dining room positioned transversely to the rear, while 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 rises three storeys with an attic and contains the lounge and other public rooms facing south, with services positioned on the north side of the corridor and staircases at either end providing access to the bedrooms above. The kitchen and service areas with associated 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 accommodates 107 officers with quarters for 84.

All windows are wood sashes with glazing bars, set to flush boxes and voussoirs with stone sills. The steep hipped roofs rise from a shallow box of eaves, with some sections emphasised by raised flush parapets. Stacks are severely rectangular with flush cappings. A very small plinth and plain string course above the first floor run along the three-storey building, which spans 23 bays with the central unit of eleven bays slightly stepped forward and topped by a raised parapet; the returns measure six bays. Most windows are twelve-pane, but the ground floor contains very large 28-pane units, with narrower 21-pane windows to bays 7, 10, 14 and 17; all have a keystone taken up to the string course. At first floor, cantilevered stone balustraded balconies occur at bays 3/4 and 20/21, and also to the central three bays above a three-arched arcade on panelled pilasters with moulded architraves and moulded architraves on a full-width stone landing. Set-back paired panelled doors beneath an interlace fanlight, flanked by arched sashes, occupy this central position. Windows to the first floor balconies extend to 15-pane and carry moulded stone architraves and keystones. Four narrow but deep stacks rise from the roof slope above the central section.

On each side of the central range a single storey link connects to the accommodation blocks, all fitted with twelve-pane sashes. These blocks rise two storeys and present symmetrical five-window hipped blocks to the front. Return elevations have three-window hipped blocks with central doors, projecting forward from a nine-window central range with a parapet raised above the central five bays. The central section includes a 20-pane sash above a pair of doors in moulded architrave. Above the parapet sit five segmental dormers with twelve-pane sashes, leading to tile-hung cheeks and lead roofs.

The interior was not inspected but these rooms were designed with bolection-moulded fireplaces and panelling to the main suite, along with open-well staircases.

This is an impressive example of a large-scale neo-Georgian officers' mess and quarters on a key aviation site, typical of those erected on training airfields during the 1930s. Despite its scale, it is handled with simple dignity and embodies the improved architectural quality associated with the post-1934 Expansion Period of the RAF, which resulted from public concerns over rearmament and the environmental impact of air bases on the landscape. Detailing throughout is restrained, but massing, spacing and proportions are carefully considered in the neo-Georgian style favoured at this period, influenced by the impact of the Royal Fine Arts Commission, particularly through the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. As is common on RAF bases, the Mess is set somewhat apart from the remainder of the buildings and has its own private entrance gates from the minor road to the south.

Manby was one of the first generation (Scheme A) of RAF stations built as a result of the great expansion prompted by the rise of Hitler's Germany, although construction did not commence until 1936 and it was not opened until July 1938. It was built as an Armament Training School and comprised the RAF's principal armament training section at the beginning of the Second World War, training armament officers, bomb aimers, air gunners and armourers with a variety of aircraft ranging from Hawker Hinds to Wellingtons. At the outset of war it was provided with a decoy airfield at Mablethorpe and used the bombing and gunnery range at Thaddlethorpe. It was later equipped with two paved runways measuring 1,448 and 1,232 yards. The RAF Flying College was formed here in 1949, and the base was closed in 1974.

It ranks with Hullavington in Wiltshire—another Scheme A station—as the most complete and architecturally unified of the stations of the so-called Expansion Period, underway from June 1934. The buildings reflect a distinct change in the aesthetic quality and design of RAF stations. Against a background of public resistance to rearmament and concerns about the impact of airfields on the countryside, the recently-formed Royal Fine Art Commission advised the Air Ministry on the design of new sites. This consultation resulted in the appointment of a specialist architectural adviser, Mr Archibald Bulloch MRIBA, to the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings. The buildings erected for much of the Expansion Period were based upon a range of type designs characterised by homogeneity of materials and careful control of proportions. A clear distinction was made between neo-Georgian domestic buildings and the more stridently modern style used for technical buildings. The buildings on the base were designed for training purposes, which allowed a greater formality of planning than purely operational stations, here achieved by grouping the principal buildings around a large parade ground. The domestic and administrative buildings—Bulloch designs of 1934-5—are designed in a broadly neo-Georgian style and comprise a group of special importance. These use timber double-hung sashes and elevations presented in carefully-considered areas of wall and window with regularity of layout and comfortable proportions characteristic of the period. Many of these designs, from the barracks blocks to the sergeants' mess and the fine instructional block, have not been noted on any other RAF sites of the period. The Officers' Mess, the largest of the domestic buildings, is set apart to the south with its own driveway, and the married officers' and NCO's quarters to the south-east form a well-preserved group. The technical buildings, grouped around the C-type hangars fronting the flying field, use standard steel casements with horizontal bars.