Building No. 91 (Dining Rooms and Cookhouse)

Dining room and cookhouse for ratings, built in 1931 and extended in 1939. HMS Daedalus, Gosport.

The building is constructed in cavity wall red brickwork with slate roofs. It began as a single-storey compact 'H'-shaped block with a central porch, containing three small dining rooms and a cookhouse. In 1939 it was considerably extended by the addition of a large dining room at right angles to the cross axis at each end, creating a bolder 'H' form, with a new kitchen across the rear (north) side. Small hipped lower blocks are attached to the gable-ends to the south.

The building is entered through a small square porch and ante-room, with dining rooms to each side. The later dining rooms project well forward. The entrance front features glazing-bar sashes to stone sills and brick voussoir heads. The flat-roofed porch contains a pair of panelled doors with a panel over, executed in decorative brickwork, flanked by a low sash on each side, and with a door on the west return. To each side of the porch is a 12-pane sash. The original gables are brought forward with barge-board and fascia forming a closed pediment containing a small bulls-eye vent, above a large triple sash in 8:12:8-panes to brick mullions. A narrow link with a sash connects each side to the slightly higher cross wings, all in detail matching the original building. The cross wings have 5 sashes to the inner face and 7 on the outer returns. The left wing includes a door and overlight on three concrete steps (a later addition). Both the left and right wings have lower hipped additions with small sashes. The right wing has a central door in a stone surround, flanked by two small sashes, with small sashes on the returns. The gables have attached open pediments, with expressed brick quoins in one recessed to four projecting courses. The rear of the early block has closed pedimented gables over triple sashes matching the front, and the 1939 kitchen occupies a wide gabled block across the rear, connected to the earlier cookhouse with a roof-light, with later infill in courtyard areas.

The entrance lobby has a quarry-tile floor and a haystack lantern overhead. The dining rooms have linoleum flooring and suspended ceilings.

The building displays the simple elegance in layout and detailing characteristic of the 1930s Expansion Period in RAF designs. The extensions maintain this studied approach. The building was positioned at the head of the main parade ground, flanked by the ratings' barracks, and when extended to meet anticipated wartime growth, the new wings partly obscured the frontages of the two northernmost accommodation blocks.

HMS Daedalus was established in 1917 as a temporary naval seaplane training school, initially developed as a satellite to the Royal Naval Air Service base at Calshot on the opposite (west) side of Southampton Water. The RAF took over its administration in 1918, and during the 1920s training continued for the newly-formed Fleet Air Arm, training pilots for warship operations and later armed merchant cruisers in the Battle of the Atlantic. The site is immediately adjacent to the Solent but is severed from it by Marine Parade. Seaplane hangars, amongst the earliest structures on the site, are located to the south and east of a generous concrete apron and connected by concrete slipways to the sea. Lieutenant J G N Clifts was responsible for a number of buildings on the site from 1918, including the Power House of 1918. The base underwent major rebuilding after 1931 when it became Coastal Area headquarters, with the whole base closely woven into adjacent suburban roads, some pre-1917 houses being demolished or reused, including Westcliffe House, reused as an officers' mess.