The Armoury and blast walls at former RAF West Raynham

The Armoury to former RAF West Raynham

This building comprises a two-storey office block with an attached single-storey range of workshops and armouries, accompanied by separate blast walls. It was built in 1936 to a design by P M Stratton, based on a 1934 pitched-roof design by A Bulloch, and extended between 1954 and 1969. The structure is constructed in concrete with steel doors and windows throughout.

The building has an irregular plan-form. The original part forms an H-plan, with the two-storey architectural frontage facing north-west (referred to here as the west of the building). The single-storey range forming the eastern part of the H is wider than the western range and extends in an L-shape to the south and east.

All parts of the building have flat roofs. The front elevation of the two-storey office building is mostly symmetrical, with steel-framed windows of various sizes and a central entrance of double doors beneath a semi-circular flat concrete canopy. On the ground floor to the right of the front door are small windows with glass bricks and steel hatches beneath them, used for handing weapons in and out, with three small lights above the windows. The north and south sides of the office range and the linking range contain steel-framed windows to both storeys, with steel double doors at the south end.

The north end of the single-storey range contains two sets of steel doors giving access to separate armoury rooms inside, with a detached blast wall in front of the building at this location. The east elevation contains three steel doors (one single and two double), also providing access to separate armoury rooms, with another detached blast wall located here. At the southern end the attached range has concertina-folding garage doors.

The south elevation, which represents the 1960s extended area, contains six 15-light steel-framed windows with a concertina-folding garage door to the right and a slightly lower section with double doors.

The office building has a central entrance and hall leading to a corridor with rooms of various sizes originally used as offices and classrooms. The AML Bombing Teacher was located on the ground floor with its target floor located in a small basement room reached by stairs with plain steel balusters. The stairs also rise to the first floor to a cantilevered landing. The basement room has a steel door and would have had a large opening in the ceiling to allow projection from the AML Bombing Teacher, though this has been filled in.

The first floor contains a series of rooms either side of a spine corridor. The projection room of the AML Bombing Teacher would have been here in the first room adjacent to the stairs, and the station photographic section with separate rooms for different parts of the photographic process was housed here. Most internal doors are original four-panel doors, some of which have been removed from their hinges, and a few are sliding doors.

The ground floor of the office building has an internal door into the single-storey part, where the main space is a large central workshop lit by a central lantern light. Towards the north, the back of the workshop contains a brick-built, canopied bar area from the 1980s, behind which are rooms with steel external doors originally for storing ammunition.

At the east end of the workshop area is a lobby with a store area to the left and steps up to the room that contained the camera obscura to the right. A circular concrete cover in the ceiling marks where the camera obscura was located.

There are detached blast walls outside the north-east corner of the building: one in front of the north elevation and another in front of the east elevation.