Officers' Mess, Former Raf Spitalgate

This is an officers' mess building, constructed in 1927 by the Air Ministry’s Directorate of Works and Buildings. The building is of English bond brick construction with a Welsh slate roof and brick stacks. It was designed as a rectangular main block with ground-floor mess rooms, to which a rear dining room is attached. Link corridors extend from each side of the main block to 'Y-plan' accommodation blocks.

The building is two storeys high. The symmetrical front of the main block has eleven windows, with a central double-leaf entrance door topped by an overlight and a bracketed hood. Windows are steel two-light casements set in mullioned and transomed frames, with alternating canted bay windows on the ground floor. Paired brick stacks are connected by arched links to the hipped return elevations. A plain, parallel range extends to the rear of the main block. The link corridors each have a central doorway flanked by three-light steel casements. Each link connects to a three-window elevation of a hipped accommodation block with similar two-light casements. These are then attached by a single-bay, two-storey link to each of the accommodation blocks which have end stacks to hipped roofs. The outer elevations of the accommodation blocks are facades with five windows, featuring a central tripartite window flanked by full-height canted bay windows. The inner elevations have nine-window facades with broad pilasters flanking a central entrance bay with a broad, bracketed canopy over a half-glazed door with flanking lights.

The interior retains original joinery, including panelled doors throughout. Recreational and mess rooms feature pilasters to moulded cornicing and panelled ceilings. Dog-leg stairs have turned balusters.

The mess building, designed in 1924-5, is an important example of early planning for the dispersal of RAF buildings, with the splayed accommodation wings flanking the main mess block. Stations of special function, such as Henlow and Cranwell, received officers' mess buildings of individual design before 1934, as opposed to more standardised designs used at fighter and bomber stations. The station opened as a training facility in 1917 and was retained for RAF use after 1919. The 3 Flight Training School moved to Spitalgate in April 1922, with intensive use of the site continuing throughout the 1920s. After a short period as a bomber station, it returned to training until its integration into 5 Group, Bomber Command. The entire facility was rebuilt between 1925 and 1927.

(Plans and elevations are held in the National Monuments Record, BHM/647-57)