30, Ledo Road

Married officers' house at RAF Duxford, built 1936-7 to a Group V design for Flight Lieutenants. Designed by A Bulloch, architectural advisor to the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings, to Drawing No 6537/36.

The house is constructed in red cavity brick in Flemish bond with a pantile roof and brick chimney stacks. It is two storeys tall. The ground floor contains an entrance hall, drawing room and dining room, with bedrooms above including a servant's room.

All windows are timber sash with glazing-bars set in flush boxes with brick voussoirs. The south-facing garden front features a canted bay window to the left of a four-window range with 12-pane sashes, one of which is deepened into French windows. The north front, facing onto the drive, has a projecting gable housing the entrance hall and stair, with 8-pane sashes to the returns and to the gable face. A panelled door is set in a classical doorcase with bracketed cornice. End and axial chimney stacks are positioned symmetrically.

This is a distinctive design from 1935, part of the Air Ministry's approach to airbase architecture during the 1930s expansion period. The detailing is restrained throughout, 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 and particularly by the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. The house forms part of a well-preserved group of married officers' houses set to one side of the domestic site of former RAF Duxford, representing the finest and best-preserved example of a fighter base of the period up to 1945 in Britain. An air raid shelter is located in the garden to the south, adjacent to No 30.