Gibson Building

Gibson Building

This officers' mess, now converted to council offices, was built in 1939 based on a type design by A Bulloch, architectural advisor to the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings. The building is constructed in stretcher-bond brick with cavity walling, hipped plain tile roofs, and brick stacks.

The plan comprises a central entrance and recreation block with services and dining room to the rear, flanked by accommodation wings attached at right angles and extending to the rear.

The exterior displays Neo-Georgian style. The front elevation features two 3-window fronts of 2-storey accommodation blocks flanking a single-storey central block of 5:3:5 bays. The 5-bay central porch breaks forward and contains semi-circular arched entries with similar arches over half-glazed inner doors with fanlights. The flanking recreation rooms have tall 12/16-pane sashes, with their junction with the hall marked by tall stacks. The 3-window fronts to the accommodation wings have 6/6-pane sashes and 13-window outer elevations, each with a central stack with swept flanks set above a similar arched door with tile imposts.

The interior of the central block retains original plasterwork, including moulded cornicing, and joinery, including half-glazed doors, to the hall and flanking recreation rooms. The latter have bolection-moulded surrounds to chimneypieces. The dining room to the rear has cornicing to the ceiling, which is subdivided into panels.

West Malling was one of the stations built for Fighter Command during the latter stages of the inter-war expansion of the RAF. A satellite of Biggin Hill within Fighter Command's strategically critical 11 Group, the airfield was opened in June 1940. Following raids in August 1940 that rendered it unservicable for much of the Battle of Britain, it reopened in October 1940 as a nightfighter station equipped with Bristol Beaufighters in 1941, later using Mosquitos and Typhoons in offensive operations in northern Europe. It became a key station during Operation Diver in 1944, the defence against V1 bomb attacks on the east and south-eastern coasts.

The mess forms part of an exceptionally well-preserved group of buildings on the domestic site, strongly representative of the neo-Georgian and Art Deco type designs characteristic of the 1930s expansion period. The separation of mess, recreation rooms, and accommodation functions was a deliberate design principle intended to limit the risk of a single run of bombs destroying a building and its occupants. From 1938, coinciding with Bulloch's replacement by P M Stratton, new buildings and stations made increasing use of concrete and flat roofs to speed up construction and counter the effects of incendiary bombs.