Building 10 (Station Sick Quarters) And Decontamination Annexe

WHITTLESFORD

1767/0/10019 NORTH CAMP, IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM (FORME 01-DEC-05 R RAF DUXFORD) Building 10 (Station Sick Quarters) an d Decontamination Annexe

GV II Station sick quarters. Dated '1933 AD' over central arch. By the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings. Drawing No 213/30; annexe built 1939 after drawing No 7503/37. Stretcher bond brickwork with slate roof.

PLAN: A single storey T-plan with central arched entry through symmetrical S front; the rear wing offset to the left. Series of small rooms for consultation, dental surgery, waiting room, medical stores, dispensary and kitchen. It connects by a high-wall passageway to the Decontamination Annexe, built to a pattern evolved in 1937 and fully described in Francis (1996, 59-61), principally comprising undressing, showering and clean clothes sections. This unit has its own water tanks above the flat roof, and was protected by earth abutments (cut away to its SW corner for an access road).

EXTERIOR: All windows are replacement uPVC, in plain reveals and to concrete sills. The front has each side a group of three, then a pair of openings, to brick mullions, and a wide central arch to brick voussoirs and a painted keystone with date; the arch springs from low walls with coping framing the entrance landing to set-back doorway. At each return is a pair of lights with brick mullion, and a small 3-light flat-roofed dormer above the entrance. The hipped roof is set to a tight eaves detail. At the back are similar windows, then a short diagonal link with large steel casement to the rear wing, which has 3 doors to deep overlights and various windows; there is a small brick stack centred to the wing.

INTERIOR: original doors and joinery. Decontamination Annexe retains all plain spaces to original plan form and retains steel-shuttered openings for discarding contaminated clothes outside.

HISTORY: Despite the loss of its original windows, this building retains its essential fabric and comprises an example characteristic of the designs established during Trenchard's post-1923 expansion of the RAF. It occupies a key part of the domestic site at Duxford, close to the Pilot's Block and Sergeants' Mess (qqv) and facing into the main barracks square. The Decontamination Annexe to the rear was built for wounded personnel who also required decontamination for the effects of gas. Duxford represents the finest and best-preserved example of a fighter base representative of the period up to 1945 in Britain, with an exceptionally complete group of First World War technical buildings in addition to technical and domestic buildings typical of both inter-war Expansion Periods of the RAF. It also has important associations with the Battle of Britain and the American fighter support for the Eighth Air Force. For more details of the history of the site see under entry for the Officers' Mess (Building 45), and for more details of decontamination buildings see Building No. 103.