Building 46 (Squash Court)

WHITTLESFORD

1767/0/10023 NORTH CAMP, IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM (FORME 10-OCT-02 R RAF DUXFORD) Building 46 (Squash Court)

GV II

Squash racquets court. 1935. By the Air Ministry Directorate of Works and Buildings. Drawing No 1842/35. Flemish bond brickwork with stiffening piers, corrugated asbestos-cement roof on steel trusses.

PLAN: A single court, entered through S gabled end, and with stairs to observation gallery, and small waiting room.

EXTERIOR: A tall gabled block, the central part of each gable raised to a shouldered parapet with coping, above a louvred vertical opening to a flush concrete lintel. At the S end a central part-glazed entrance door, and on each return, at a low level, a small 2-light timber casement with glazing-bars; these and the doorway to flush lintels. To each long side and two full-height buttresses. Each roof slope has a large are of patent glazing taken up to the ridge.

INTERIOR: Entrance lobby with stairs up to viewing area for court.

HISTORY: One or more squash courts were normal to RAF bases, closely related, as here, to the Officers' Mess (Building 45, qv). This court is characteristic of the careful approach to design typical of the 1930s Expansion Period of the RAF, and of the amenity provision for officers on military barracks dating from the mid C19. 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).