Former Dining Room and Institute at former RAF Kenley

Former Dining Room and Institute at former RAF Kenley

This institute and dining room was designed in 1932 by the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings. It is constructed with stretcher bond brick cavity walls, concrete floors, and a slate roof supported on steel trusses.

The building comprises a long narrow principal range in two storeys with short returned wings to the front, facing the former parade ground. The ground floor of these wings contained dining rooms for 591 airmen, while the first floor provided dining facilities for corporals, together with reading rooms and games areas. Staircase wells with large dimensions occupy the entrance positions at each end of the wings. To the rear, the building is mainly single-storey but includes a two-storey staff accommodation building, with kitchens, boiler room and general services arranged behind.

The exterior features glazing-bar sashes, mostly boarded, set within brick voussoirs with stone sub-sills. The parade ground front is symmetrical, with a recessed five-bay centre containing 12-pane sashes above 16-pane sashes. The short wing returns have 12-pane sashes above pairs of flush doors with plain overlights, set in stone pilaster surrounds with cornices. The outer ends of these wings display closed pediments with small ventilation slits, above full-height Portland stone panels containing 16-pane sashes above oculi with square grids, all with moulded surrounds and sills on brackets above plain apron panels. These wings also incorporate small stone plinths. The return ends are identical, featuring closed-pediment gables above 8/12/8-pane sashes with central doors flanked by small eight-pane sashes; the ground-floor openings have moulded stone architraves and cornices. The forward-projecting wings have 12-pane sashes at first floor and four small lights to the ground floor. The rear wall of the main block has a closed pediment gable near the left-hand end, with a single 12-pane sash followed by eight 12-pane sashes at first floor, above the various service buildings. The eaves feature flat soffits with moulded cornices or gutters, and the gabled ends have rusticated quoins created by recessing one course in every five. The rear service range comprises five-bay two-storey blocks with hipped roofs, central service yard entry and flanking lower wings.

The interior contains dog-leg stairs with steel balusters. No other internal details of note are recorded.

The careful proportions of this building reflect the Air Ministry's consultation with the Royal Fine Arts Commission. Kenley has lost most of its buildings but retains the most complete fighter airfield associated with the Battle of Britain to have survived. A large part of Kenley Common, managed by the Corporation of London, was converted for use as an aerodrome by the Royal Flying Corps in 1917 and enlarged through an Act of Parliament in 1939. The 800-yard runways and perimeter tracks, completed in December 1939 and extended by a further 200 yards in 1943, and all 12 fighter pens substantially completed by April 1940, have survived intact. This represents uniquely important survival related to military action of world historical significance.

In late March 1939, the Air Ministry agreed to Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding's proposals for all-weather runways and perimeter tracks at critical fighter bases prone to waterlogging, primarily those in 11 Group in south-east England. The following month agreement was reached for fighter stations to have dispersals for three squadrons of 12 aircraft each. Subsequently, fighter pens with blast-shelter walls and internal air-raid shelters were erected at key fighter airfields. The designs, to which Dowding had given close attention following trials in August 1938, had already been established by Fighter Command Works.

On 18 August 1940, Kenley was subject to one of the most determined Luftwaffe attacks on a sector airfield, with photographs of the attack—including one on a fighter pen—subsequently published in the German magazine Der Adler. During this raid, three personnel were killed and three hangars and several aircraft destroyed. A second major raid on 30 August resulted in 39 personnel killed and 26 wounded, with damage to the operations block on the following day. Scars from these attacks remain visible in post-war repair work to the officers' mess, prominently sited on the west side of the aerodrome, which now stands as the most impressive surviving building from the station's reconstruction between 1931 and 1933. The perimeter pillboxes were demolished in 1984. The last surviving hangar and the control tower were destroyed by fire in 1978, and the sector operations block was demolished in 1984.