20, Ledo Road (East Side)

Married officers' house at North Camp, Imperial War Museum (former RAF Duxford), built 1936–7 to a Group V design for Flight Lieutenants by A Bulloch, architectural advisor to the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings. Drawing No 6537/36.

The building is constructed of red cavity brick in Flemish bond with a pantile roof and brick chimney stacks. It comprises two storeys arranged with an entrance hall, drawing room and dining room on the ground floor, and bedrooms above including a servant's room.

The exterior features all timber sash windows with glazing-bars set to flush boxes with brick voussoirs. The south-facing garden front displays a canted bay window to the left of a four-window range with 12-pane sashes. 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. The entrance is marked by a panelled door set in a classical doorcase with bracketed cornice. Chimney stacks are positioned at the end and axial positions.

This is a distinctive design of 1935 by Air Ministry architect A Bulloch, employing restrained detailing throughout, with massing, spacing and proportions carefully considered in the neo-Georgian style favoured during this period and influenced by the impact of the Royal Fine Arts Commission, particularly through the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. By the 1930s, airbase design had become inextricably bound with issues of national identity. In Britain, in contrast to more stridently modern styles adopted for civil terminal architecture, planners for the post-1934 expansion of the RAF were required by politicians to soften the visual impact of new bases on the landscape, mindful of public concerns over rearmament and environmental change. The Air Ministry's main consultant in these matters was the Royal Fine Arts Commission. The result, for the first generation of bases constructed after 1934, was a blend of Garden City planning and architecture for married quarters, neo-Georgian propriety for barracks and other domestic buildings, and a watered-down Moderne style for technical buildings.

This house is part of a well-preserved group of married officers' houses set to one side of the domestic site, representing the finest and best-preserved example of a fighter base 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. The site has important associations with the Battle of Britain and American fighter support for the Eighth Air Force.