Building No 48 (Dining Room and Cookhouse)

Building No 48 (Dining Room and Cookhouse)

A dining room and cookhouse complex at RAF Bicester, designed by the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings. The original building was constructed in 1926 to drawing number 184/23, then extended in 1938 (drawing numbers 348/25 and 1775/35) to provide three dining areas, eventually catering for 192 airmen. It is built in red brick in stretcher bond with hipped slate roofs, throughout one storey.

The building's plan evolved significantly. The first dining room, entered from the west side, was backed by a kitchen wing to the rear. An extension to the left created a symmetrical long front, followed by a third room added to the rear right, resulting in a complex T-plan. In 1938, the principal entrance was relocated to the internal angle between the two wings, making it more accessible from the airfield's Technical Site via a new gateway off the A421 Bicester/Buckingham road. The left (north) dining room was converted into a cinema in 1940.

The exterior is dominated by the long main front, which has a slightly projecting hipped centre that formerly housed the entrance but is now hidden behind a brick blast wall. Windows are generally 12-pane sashes, some with an additional 3-pane light at the top, set into flush concrete lintels and sills. The right section has five bays and the left five bays plus a door, though window openings on the left wing are blocked; this wing also has four ridge ventilators. The right return features a hip over a panelled door with over-light mounted on three concrete steps. The rear entrance comprises a flat-roofed canted porch with a central door and full-height side-lights with glazing, plus four sashes to each wing. The kitchen wing extends to the rear with a flat gabled end and stack, incorporating a continuous glazed ridge lantern and a second gable wall and stack, possibly marking where the kitchen was extended. A large square brick stack rises to the eaves of the rear dining room. The kitchen displays close-set sashes and extends further with a hipped wing behind and parallel to the front range. Throughout, the building has small boxed eaves.

The interior contains a queen-post truss to the lantern in the cookhouse.

This building exemplifies the architectural style of the first phase of RAF Bicester's development, representing the first permanent designs for Britain's independent air force and part of the group of airfield buildings originally laid out during the 1920s Trenchard Expansion Period. Its expansion reflects both the development of RAF Bicester and the evolution of military aviation in the inter-war period. RAF Bicester is 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 a philosophy of offensive deterrence. The airfield retains, better than any other military base in Britain, the layout and fabric relating to pre-1930s military aviation and the development of Britain's strategic bomber force up to 1939, including the grass flying field with its 1939 boundaries largely intact, bounded by bomb stores built in 1938/9 and airfield defences from the early Second World War. For much of the Second World War, RAF Bicester functioned as an Operational Training Unit, training British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand air crews for Bomber Command service. These OTUs fulfilled the critical function of enabling bomber crews, once individual training in flying, bombing, gunnery and navigation was complete, to form and train as units. Bicester now represents the premier surviving example of such an installation.