College Hall At Royal Air Force Cranwell

College Hall at Royal Air Force Cranwell is the principal college building for RAF Officer Cadets, designed by Officer of Works architect J G West, FRIBA, and built between 1929 and 1933. It is constructed of fine red facing brick laid in English bond, with extensive Portland stone detailing, and roofed in Westmoreland slate with lead dressings.

The building follows a generous Baroque axial composition. At its heart lies a central block containing public rooms including lecture halls, classrooms, a library, recreation rooms, and a mess hall with kitchens, all arranged over two storeys. Single-storey corridor links extend from each side of this central block to two-storey bedroom blocks arranged around generous courtyards with open outer ends. The accommodation was designed for 200 cadets, each in a single bedroom planned to have either a south-facing or courtyard view, accessed from central corridors with services located on the inner sides. The building extends approximately 250 metres east to west and 100 metres north to south, with a central dome on a high drum rising to approximately 36 metres. Unlike most buildings on the base, College Hall lies to the north of the public road (B 1429) that passes through the site. It is aligned on an axis that passes through the ornamental gates and lodges to Queens Avenue and the main parade ground, with the vista closed by the main administrative headquarters (Building 16).

Throughout the building, windows are small-pane casements set to a central mullion and one or two transoms, with the small upper light usually horizontally pivot-hung. They are recessed one half-brick depth, with brick voussoir heads, though some have stone voussoirs and some have stone moulded surrounds. Stone sills are moulded and stooled.

The central range comprises 19 bays and features giant unfluted Ionic pilasters, doubled at each end and returned. A prostyle hexastyle portico with responds covers the central three bays. This section is built in stone and rises through a square base to a smaller square base and superstructure supporting the dome, which is carried on Wren-style paired columns with a broken-forward cornice. The small leaded dome is topped with a cupola and gilt weathervane and sits on a cylindrical drum with square lights. Open clock-faces appear on the south, east and west elevations. The main frieze to the portico displays fine Roman carved and gilt lettering of the RAF motto 'PER ARDUA AD ASTRA', and the pediment carries the Royal Arms in high relief. The columns stand on six stone steps. Below them are three two-light casements with transom in moulded architraves above two similar windows, but with a central cartouche to five-fold bays, flanking a pair of panelled and part-glazed doors set within a moulded arched architrave with central armorial bearings. The enriched main architrave extends across the full width and returns to the three-bay ends of the block, with casements at first-floor level. To the rear, the entablature has a brick frieze and is not enriched.

The set-back single-storey link corridors each have three two-light casements in raised brick surrounds above a brick apron and triple brick voussoirs, placed each side of a stone central feature containing three pairs of glazed doors with overlights divided by Doric three-quarter columns. These carry a high panelled blocking-course and are flanked by urns. The shallow entablature extends the full width of the links, beneath a deep moulded lead facing to concealed guttering, with the lead roofs also visible. The rear of the central range is complex, incorporating two transverse hipped ranges including the main mess, and various service and other ranges, some with flat roofs.

The large open courtyards comprising the bedroom blocks were not completed in a single stage, but detailing has been maintained consistently throughout. Although arranged over two storeys, the windows to the upper floor are shallower than those below and are set in a high brick blocking-course above an intermediate moulded string-course, with the bottoms of these upper lights cutting into a flush stone course. The wings are centred on the main transverse corridor axis in the main building, marked by a square ridged turret with an arched light to each face and finials to pyramid terminations. To the south, set forward from the main range, three-bay pavilion ends flank a nine-bay centre. The pavilion lower lights have enriched stone surrounds, bold quintuple keystones, and a stone apron, with the centre light being segmental and also having stone enrichment. The returns to the pavilions comprise five bays, with central doors in stone surrounds matching those of the main centre block and enriched window surrounds, followed by five bays back to the corridor links, above which are wide closed pediments. Inside the courtyards, a central three-bay pedimented unit is flanked by five bays at each side, with nine bays to each long return, linked to the end pavilions.

The accommodation blocks were not inspected. In the principal range, most of the joinery is in polished Burma teak, with panelled or glazed-and-panelled doors set in moulded architraves, some with cornices. Moulded skirtings are painted. The entrance hall is open to the upper floor through a large central circular opening trimmed with an embellished plaster mould and fitted with a balustrade of plain square steel verticals and a polished hardwood handrail. To the rear of this hall, a long transverse corridor opens on each side, lit by ridged patent-glazing skylights, with the ceiling openings trimmed with plaster moulding matching that of the circular opening in the hall. Leading off the hall on each side of the axis, the main staircases are constructed in polished hardwood with open strings, featuring a bold cast-iron balustrade with square balusters and scrolled enrichment carrying a swept and wreathed hardwood handrail. Beyond the staircase lobby, set well back and arranged transversely, is the lofty seven-bay cadets' mess, with a compartmental ceiling carried on large fluted Corinthian pilasters standing on a dado plinth. Paired glazed doors with overlights in moulded architraves with entablature are set beneath the large 40-pane windows. At the right-hand (east) end is a deep musicians' gallery at upper level, set to a three-sided recess. The main library, with many original book stacks, and the large reading-room are located at first-floor level.

This building comprises the principal element of a site that is key to the development of British military air power and remains the most architecturally ambitious commission by the Air Ministry. When the RAF was formed as the world's first independent air force in April 1918, during the period of retrenchment lasting 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 were in laying the foundations for a technology-based service through the training of officers at Cranwell and technicians at Halton in Buckinghamshire.

Ingeniously planned around very complex requirements, including those of dispersal which had become a key feature of air station planning from the 1920s, the Cadet College uses first-class materials. These are carefully and consistently detailed both externally and internally, resulting in a building which can be favourably compared with any major institution of its era, reflecting the pride of the service in its presentation. Sir Samuel Hoare, the Secretary of State for Air, took a strong interest in West's design and was a strong advocate of the view that the architecture of the new college should reflect the importance accorded to Britain's independent air force.

The foundation of a college to train RAF officers on 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 was 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, published in 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 the public road (B1429) separates the two parts.