Former Airmens Institute

Former Airmen's Institute

This is an airmen's accommodation, dining room and institute building, now in commercial use, located at Churchill Square at Kings Hill (the former RAF West Malling). Built in 1939-40 to a 1938 design by J. H. Binge of the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings, it features reinforced concrete floors and roof on stretcher bond cavity walls with an original asphalt roof finish.

The building is planned as a broad U-shape, with a wide two-storey reception block at the front originally containing reading, games and recreation rooms. This is linked on its central axis to a large single-storey dining room to the rear. Single-storey link corridors on each side connect the front block to two-storey bedroom blocks positioned at right angles and brought forward from the central range. Kitchen and service areas lie to the right of the dining room at the rear.

All windows are steel casement with mainly two-light designs, a transom and horizontal bars, set within a wood sub-frame in slight plain reveals with concrete sills. The centre range has smaller two-light windows in cast stone surrounds. This front range displays five windows on each side of the central doorway, with ground-floor windows deeper than those at first-floor level and set to continuous lintel bands, with a sillband at ground floor. A pair of part-glazed doors with overlight and sidelights is framed in painted piers with channelled capitals in stepped recessed jambs, leading to a flat canopy with moulded edge. A single brick stack stands off-centre to the right. The returned ends feature one casement window above the flat roof of the links, while the rear elevation has various windows including a deep stairlight and two escape doors from the upper level opening to the flat roofs. The link corridors have two windows to the front and five to the rear.

The accommodation wings are arranged in seven bays by one bay, with deep two-light casements at each level on the outer elevations and a variety of openings including a deep stairlight facing inwards. The wings project forward six bays, with a part-glazed door on two steps in channelled painted responds leading to a segmental flat canopy at the centre of each. The short returns have one window at each level, although the rear of the left wing has a ground-floor door. All three of these ranges have a plain square roof edge and a three-course brick frieze above the upper lintel band. The rear dining room spans five bays by three bays, with windows and details matching those of the front ranges. The kitchen to its left features a large ventilating roof lantern, while beyond this is a large boiler room with doors, overlight and vents to the outer end, wide doors and louvres on the return, four roof vents, and a large square stack.

The interior contains original joinery including panelled doors, with the principal features being solid string concrete staircases with terrazzo finish and hardwood swept handrails on steel Art Deco balustrades.

This building is a key element of the best-preserved Art Deco-influenced RAF barracks in the country, planned in a collegiate manner. From 1938, following the replacement of Bulloch by P. M. Stratton, new buildings and stations including Middle Wallop and West Malling increasingly employed concrete and flat roofs to speed up construction and counter the effects of shrapnel and incendiary bombs. These buildings were designed by Air Ministry architect J. H. Binge, whose marked horizontal elevations and Art Deco detailing present a consciously modern style. The flat-roofed buildings around Churchill Square, arranged in a collegiate plan with the Institute at their head, represent the best-preserved group of their type in the country. The Institute, planned on the dispersed principles established for RAF messes from the 1920s, is the most elaborate example of this Art Deco styling, distinguished from the Institute building at Bicester in Oxfordshire by its flanking accommodation wings.

From 1930, Maidstone School of Flying used the area as a private landing ground, registered as Maidstone airport in 1932. As a satellite of Biggin Hill within Fighter Command's strategically critical 11 Group, West Malling opened as a fighter station in June 1940. However, a series of raids in August and September 1940 rendered the airfield unserviceable for much of the Battle of Britain. It reopened in October of that year but only accepted a full station complement in April 1941, when it became a nightfighter station. Bristol Beaufighter pilots based here included Guy Gibson and Don Parker, both becoming famous names in Bomber Command—Gibson notably for his leadership of 617 Squadron in the Dams Raid and other precision attacks. The station was later used by Mosquitos and Typhoons in operations against occupied Europe, including support for D-Day, and became the principal station during Operation Diver in 1944, the defensive operation against V1 bombs in the east and south-eastern coasts. Significantly, no other fighter stations associated with Operation Diver have survived in sufficiently complete condition to merit listing; other key London-area sites—Northolt, Biggin Hill and Kenley—were positioned behind the balloon barrage erected for the operation. After the war, West Malling became the main rehabilitation centre for prisoners of war returning from Germany to Britain. The base entered care and maintenance in August 1960 and was acquired by Kent County Council in 1970. In 1972 it became a centre for dispossessed Ugandan Asians, and major buildings were subsequently adapted for Local Authority use, including the Officers' Mess and Building 60, while others were retained and incorporated into a larger commercial park.