Building 61 (Station Offices)

Station Offices

This station office building dates to 1933 and was designed by the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings (Drawing No 352/30). It is constructed of stretcher bond brickwork with reinforced concrete floors and a slate roof.

The building comprises a symmetrical two-storey rectangular hipped range with a short central T-arm to the rear having a flat roof, continued as a single-storey double hipped unit to a central valley. The plan centres on a central hall and staircase serving a corridor with double-banked offices on each floor. Original accommodation included the Commanding Officer's office, an engineer office and clerks' room, accounts section, waiting room, orderly room, lecture room, and library.

The front elevation displays nine windows across two storeys. All windows are wooden sashes set in reveals beneath slightly cambered brick voussoir heads with concrete sub-sills. The principal windows feature a six-pane upper sash and plate glass lower sash. The front is organised with three central bays slightly projecting forward, topped by a parapet or blocking-course raised approximately 1 metre above the eaves. This central section contains three sashes above a central pair of part-glazed doors within a stone pilaster surround with a heavy flat entablature on brackets, with a further sash flanking each side. To either side are three additional bays, each with two close-set sashes on the short returns. A fascia and soffit eaves extends across the principal block and central section with its raised blocking. Centred on the ridge is a square louvred turret on a flared lead-clad apron, topped with a square lead cupola with pinnacle; the central blocking originally carried a flagstaff.

The rear elevation features three-over-one sashes flanking the centre section, an external square boiler stack, and a small window. Large sashes appear at each level to the south return, while the north side shows modified sashes and two doors on a raised landing. The low doubled wing has a slightly lower outer section with four plus one sashes to the south and five smaller four-pane sashes to the north, together with a door and overlight. The end return contains two sashes and a door, with a small roof vent.

The interior retains original joinery and doors, including a dog-leg staircase.

Duxford represents the finest and best-preserved example of a fighter base typical of the period up to 1945 in Britain, with a uniquely complete group of First World War technical buildings alongside inter-war expansion period structures. The site holds important associations with the Battle of Britain and American Eighth Air Force fighter operations. This building is a typical but unusually unaltered example of Station Headquarters buildings designed during the first phase of inter-war RAF expansion, which began in 1923 under Sir Hugh Trenchard. Its symmetrical design derives directly from late nineteenth-century barracks architecture. It is sited immediately opposite the Guardhouse (Building 62), with which it shares the use of pale yellow brick.