Tedder Hall (Former Instructional Building)

Tedder Hall (former Instructional Building)

A training school and workshops constructed between 1935 and 1937 to a design by A Bulloch, architect to the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings (drawing no. 77/35). The building is of cavity wall brick with a hipped interlocking tile roof.

The main range is arranged around a central courtyard, with an additional narrow yard to the east bounded on its eastern side by workshops.

The building is two storeys tall. Flat arches with brick voussoir heads and concrete sills frame glazing bar sash windows throughout. The north front, facing onto the parade ground, displays a 17-window range with a central first-floor triple window featuring brick mullions to 16:32:16-pane sashes, set above a flat-roofed porch. The porch has scalloped metal lights to small windows in its side returns and a keyed semi-circular arch with imposts that extend over flanking channelled lights. All other sashes are 32-pane, except for a triple window of the same form positioned off-centre on each side of the first floor. The west and south elevations are similar in character. To the east, 5-bay ranges with 9-pane sashes extend to the north and south sides of the narrow courtyard, meeting a parapetted workshop range along the eastern side. This workshop range has large entrances to the north and south, flanked by 6-pane sashes, and a single-storey east elevation. This elevation features a 5-bay projecting central section with a taller parapet containing three tall semi-circular arched sashes flanked by narrow sash windows, the left window deepened into a door. This range is flanked by 28-pane sashes with casements to flat-roofed dormers above.

The interior features stairs with a steel Art Deco balustrade. The main entrance is flanked by telephone booths and half-glazed panelled doors.

Tedder Hall was designed during the post-1934 Expansion Period as an Armament Training School, one of the first generation of such stations under Scheme A. Although designed in 1934–5, construction did not commence until 1936, and the station was not opened until July 1938. At the outset of the Second World War, it housed the RAF's principal armament training section, training armament officers, bomb aimers, air gunners and armourers. The station 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 of 1,448 and 1,232 yards. The RAF Flying College was formed here in 1949, and the base closed in 1974.

The building ranks with Hullavington in Wiltshire—another Scheme A station—as among the most complete and architecturally unified of the post-1934 Expansion Period stations. The commission consulted the Royal Fine Arts Commission, which led to the appointment of A Bulloch as the Air Ministry's consultant architect, mirroring the appointment of Holden by London Transport. The design reflects a neo-Georgian style favoured at the period, influenced by Sir Edwin Lutyens. The training purpose allowed a greater formality of planning than purely operational stations, here achieved through the grouping of principal buildings around a large parade ground. Detailing is restrained throughout, but massing, spacing and proportions are carefully considered. The principal buildings employ timber double-hung sashes with elevations presented in carefully-considered areas of wall and window, showing regularity of layout and comfortable proportions characteristic of the period.