Building 279 (York House)

Officers' Mess and domestic accommodation built 1933-4 by the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings. Constructed in brown brick laid in Flemish bond with Portland stone dressings and Westmoreland slate roofs.

Plan and Layout

The building comprises a complex of structures arranged around a long symmetrical east-west range in two storeys with public rooms. This main range returns at the east end to form the main entrance. At the opposite end, the dining room extends at right angles to the north in a single-storey range. At the western end stands a symmetrical block with projecting end bays. From either end of this western block, low straight wall quadrants extend forward as enclosed corridors, providing access to three bedroom blocks on each side.

The main building contains an entrance lobby with access to the dining room on the right and, to the left of a corridor running straight ahead, a lounge, reading room, and bar. An open-well staircase lies to the left of the entrance. Kitchens occupy the right side in the internal angle of a rear courtyard, which also contains a free-standing two-storey domestic block set parallel with the front range. The domestic units are generally double-banked with central corridors.

External Description

All buildings have hipped roofs, mostly with box eaves and secret gutters, though the six bedroom units have very high parapets concealing internal gutters, with the roofs nearly hidden from view. Small-pane sashes in flush boxes with voussoir heads and stone or reconstructed stone sills are used throughout.

The wide south-facing range has a recessed centre of eleven bays with two-bay wings brought forward three bays. First-floor windows have twelve panes and ground-floor windows fifteen panes, but bays four, six, and eight of the long centre have pairs of glazed hardwood French doors on two steps with radial overlights. Four small stacks stand forward of the ridge, with two more on the wings.

The eastern return comprises two plus three bays with twelve-over-fifteen-pane windows. To the right stands a pair of part-glazed hardwood doors on two steps with a radial head, set within a bold Roman Doric portico in Portland stone featuring an open segmental pediment, flat responds, and a high tympanum carved with RAF insignia in high relief. Beyond this, slightly set back to the right, extends the single-storey dining room in seven bays, with five large segmental eighteen-pane sashes flanked by plain fifteen-pane sashes. The wall rises above these five bays to a cornice carrying a Portland stone urn at each end. The northern return gable has raised coping with large moulded kneelers and a central stack with swept haunches dressed in stone, flanked by a segmental eighteen-pane window on each side. The ridge carries a central square ventilation lantern with cupola.

The west end of the main range is symmetrical, arranged in 2:5:2 bays with single-bay returns, all with twelve-pane windows. A central pair of glazed doors with overlight on two steps has a stone surround with moulded architrave, central key panel, frieze, and straight cornice.

In the courtyard behind the principal range stands the flat-roofed kitchen and services block, alongside a two-storey yard accommodation building arranged in 5 by 2 bays with twelve-pane sashes, a ridge stack, and a large stack to the inner eaves. The rear of the front range has various narrow paired sashes, with two nine-pane windows in the return to the western block.

The enclosed access corridors to the accommodation blocks have flat roofs with simple moulded verges. Each corridor has two entrances on each side—pairs of glazed doors in stone architraves with blocking-course in a stepped-forward section of wall—plus four small-pane lights on each side and one on the returned end. The bedroom blocks have mainly sixteen-pane sashes in pairs, with some narrow eight-pane windows serving service areas and a sixteen-pane window on each end. These units have a stone moulded architrave below a ten-course brick parapet. The two blocks nearest the main range are fenestrated slightly differently from the other four.

Interior

The Doric portico leads to a panelled entrance lobby with a square-piered wooden screen opening to the long cross corridor, with main rooms to the left and services to the right. The front of the range contains the lounge, reading and writing rooms, and bar. The lounge in the south-east corner has moulded plaster cornice and ceiling beams with polished hardwood skirting and a hardwood Adam-style fire surround. An inner room has a polished hardwood Tudor fire surround, plaster cornice with full entablature, and moulded cross-beams. Doors are either panelled or glazed, set in moulded hardwood architraves.

From the lobby an open-well staircase in polished hardwood has a closed string, square newels, and turned balusters with a moulded handrail and dado panelling to the walls. To the right lies the entrance to the dining room, arranged in seven bays with a flat segmental plastered ceiling divided by plain beams carried on a continuous deep plastered entablature broken forward over square pilasters with caps and bases. The entablature is carried horizontally across each panelled end wall, with a fireplace at the inner end.

Historical Context

This is the most lavishly-appointed building dating from the re-planning of the West Camp in 1932-4. It is situated to the east of the planned core at West Camp, which was constructed in 1915-16 but rebuilt and re-planned in 1932-4. York Mess stands on the site of officers' accommodation dating from the earlier phase. The studied neo-Georgian design, using high-quality materials both within and without, reflects the concern of the RAF at this time—especially on such a high-profile site as Cranwell—to meet the raised design standards suggested and monitored by the Royal Fine Art Commission.

The building comprises an integral part of a site that is key to the development of Britain's military air power. When the RAF was formed as the world's first independent air force in April 1918, and during the period of retrenchment which lasted from the Armistice until the early 1920s, its founding father and first Chief of Air Staff, General Sir Hugh Trenchard, concentrated upon developing its strategic role as an offensive bomber force. His primary considerations lay in laying the foundations for a technology-based service through the training of officers at Cranwell and technicians at Halton in Buckinghamshire.

The foundation of a college to train RAF officers along the lines of Sandhurst or Dartmouth was a key element in Trenchard's plan for the permanent organisation of Britain's independent air force, whose potency was considered to rest on the effectiveness of officer and technical training. Although best known for its RAF Cadet College—the RAF equivalent of the Army's college at Sandhurst and the Navy's at Dartmouth—Cranwell has in addition a long aviation history dating back to the earliest years of the service. In early 1918 it was established as a Training Depot Station, but it had previously been used by the Royal Naval Air Service, from whom the RAF inherited temporary hutting on the West Camp. Also from 1918 a Radio Training School was based here, remaining until 1945, and the Cadet College dates from 1919. The whole was renamed RAF College in 1929, and it operated as a Service Flying Training School from 1939. From August 1925 until he left the RAF in 1935, T. E. Lawrence served at Cranwell; his experiences of life on the base are recorded in The Mint (1936).

Although work was largely completed at Halton (the apprentice base for training up personnel in a technology-based service) by 1923, work at Cranwell was delayed through uncertainties about location and costs. The result was that the main Cadet College was not begun until 1929, and the major domestic buildings not until after 1933. In the gestation period major decisions were made about overall planning at the base. College Hall was envisaged to be self-contained, sited to the north of the road, with a favourable prospect to the south centred on the principal axis which passes through the main gates to the principal parade ground of the air station. The air station's domestic buildings which in 1933-4 replaced the West Camp hutting—particularly York Mess, the Institute of the Initial Officer Training Group Headquarters (Building 16) fronting onto a parade ground and flanking barracks blocks, and the Central Flying School Headquarters (Building 259)—were completed to a high design standard. This dramatic example of Air Ministry planning was designed to enhance the overall effect of College Hall and its grounds through its architectural quality and layout, and represented a clear response to the Royal Fine Art Commission's recommendations to the Air Ministry of February 1932. The hangars lie to the south, facing the main flying area. The airfield is very extensive, with flying fields both to north and south, and a public road (B1429) separates the two parts.