Building No 20 (Dining Room And Institute)

Dining rooms and leisure facilities, 1939, designed by J.H. Binge, architect to the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings (Drawing Nos 8055 and 2522/38). The building is constructed of Flemish bond brickwork cavity walls with flat roofs covered in asphalt.

The structure forms a large complex, mostly of two storeys, centred on a broad symmetrical front range arranged in a wide H-plan. This contains the principal dining spaces with generous staircase halls at each end, and recreation rooms above. To the rear lies the kitchen with stores, and on the main axis a two-storey office building with a central throughway. A long, low single-storey wing extends to the right as part of the original design, whilst a straggling low range of mostly later date extends to the left. The ground floor interior has been opened up for later unrelated uses, but originally consisted of two principal dining spaces linked by sliding doors.

The main south-east front is notably formal in composition. A central pair of part-glazed doors sits recessed under a flat Art Deco canopy, flanked by bays with windows. Steel casement windows with large horizontal panes form the dominant feature, arranged in nine bays across the central section. The middle three bays at upper floor level have projecting window jambs, whilst the remainder feature continuous lintel bands. The short forward returns at each side contain two windows at each level, those to the right having continuous lintel and sill bands. The broad projecting end sections have three bulls-eye lights with continuous brick voussoirs above central recessed paired panelled doors set in heavy squared and recessed jambs. All three doors have been fitted with access ramps. The front incorporates a deep plinth of concrete blocks brought to lower sill level, with a frieze band that flares out to the flat roof edge. The returns at each end include deep window casements. To the right, a wide two-storey section steps down to an eleven-bay wing. The rear office unit is arranged in six bays, symmetrical in plan with steel casements and a wide central through-way. Set back to its left stands the three-sided raised clerestory lighting the main kitchen.

The interior features a plain principal space with wide open-well staircases at each end constructed in concrete with terrazzo surfaces, housed to closed strings, and fitted with typical Art Deco flat steel rails to paired balusters and a hardwood swept handrail. Secondary staircases are similarly detailed. Access to a basement air raid shelter is provided.

This building forms a key element in the development of RAF Bicester, an unusually well-preserved example of considerable architectural character, grouped with the contemporary boiler house and H-barracks block at an angle with and to the north of the earlier buildings. These 1938-type designs, featuring flat concrete roofs built for protection against incendiary devices, employed a more consciously modern style than earlier Expansion Period designs. They formed part of the Scheme M contracts placed in November 1938.

RAF Bicester stands as the best-preserved of the bomber bases constructed as the principal arm of Sir Hugh Trenchard's expansion of the RAF from 1923, based on the philosophy of offensive deterrence. It retains, better than any other military airbase in Britain, the layout and fabric relating to both pre-1930s military aviation and the development of Britain's strategic bomber force, reflecting domestic political pressures and world events in the period to 1939. This policy of offensive deterrence dominated British air power and the RAF's independent existence in the inter-war period, continuing to determine its shape and direction through the Second World War and the Cold War. The grass flying field survives with its 1939 boundaries largely intact, bounded by bomb stores built in 1938-39 and airfield defences constructed in the early stages of the Second World War. For much of the Second World War, RAF Bicester functioned as an Operational Training Unit, training Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and British air crews for service in Bomber Command. These OTUs, of which Bicester forms the premier surviving example, fulfilled the critical requirement of enabling bomber crews, once individual members had trained in flying, bombing, gunnery and navigation, to form and train as units.