Building 6 (Institute And Dining Room)

Institute and Dining Room, now used as document store

Built in 1933 by the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings (Drawing No. 852/32), this is a long narrow principal block of two storeys constructed in stretcher bond red brick with cavity walls, concrete floors, and a slate roof on steel trusses.

The building was designed to accommodate dining areas for airmen on the ground floor and corporals on the first floor, with reading rooms and games areas. Short returned wings face the parade ground, each containing a large square staircase well at either end. To the rear, the complex includes mainly single-storey service buildings along with a two-storey staff accommodation block, kitchens, beer cellar, boiler room, and general services.

The parade-ground front is symmetrical, featuring a recessed five-bay centre with 12-pane above 15-pane wooden glazing-bar sashes set in brick voussoirs with stone sub-sills. Bays 2 and 5 have been modified to contain pairs of glazed doors below the six-pane upper part of the former sashes. The short wing returns have 12-pane sashes above pairs of flush doors with a plain overlight, all set within stone pilaster surrounds with cornices. The outer ends of these wings have closed pediments with small ventilation slits above full-height Portland stone panels containing 15-pane sashes above octagonal windows with square grids, all with moulded surrounds and stone sills on brackets. These wings also feature small stone plinths.

The return ends are identical, with closed-pediment gables above 8:12:8-pane sashes above central doors flanked by small 8-pane lights. Ground-floor openings have moulded stone architraves and cornices. The forward-projecting wings contain 12-pane windows at first floor and four small lights at ground level. The rear wall of the main block has a closed-pediment gable near the left-hand end with a single 12-pane window, then eight 12-pane windows at first floor above the various service buildings. Eaves feature flat soffits with moulded cornices or gutters. Gable ends have rusticated quoins created by recessing one in every five courses, taken two bricks wide. The service range has hipped roofs throughout; low units at the rear have six small 12-pane windows returned to a central door. Across the rear within these returns is a two-storey block in five bays flanked by single-storey wings with deep inset entries. There are six brick chimney stacks of varied heights with brick cappings.

Interior features include outer staircases and some remaining joinery, though the building has otherwise been remodelled for storage purposes.

The building was constructed to provide for 200 to 250 corporals and airmen, but was extended in 1942 to accommodate wartime expansion to more than 2,000 airmen and WAAFs. The wartime extension has since been demolished, though the additional doors in the centre of the parade-ground frontage remain from this work. The layout, proportions, and detailing are similar to contemporary barracks blocks on the site (Buildings 7, 8, 9, and 13), which this building dominates. The building's careful detailing and proportions are characteristic of the period immediately following the Royal Fine Arts Commission's involvement in airfield architecture and design from November 1931 onwards. Duxford is acknowledged as 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 as well as technical and domestic buildings typical of both inter-war Expansion Periods of the RAF. The site has important historical associations with the Battle of Britain and with American fighter support for the Eighth Air Force.