Buildings 59, 60 And 61 (Officers Mess)

Officers' Mess and Single Officers' Quarters constructed in 1935-36 to designs by A. Bulloch, architectural adviser to the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings (Drawing Number 2483/36). The buildings are finished in Bath stone ashlar over brick or block construction, with pantile roofs.

The complex follows an extended H-plan arranged on formal Beaux-Arts principles. The short main axis runs through an entrance hall to the main dining room positioned transversely at the rear, whilst the long cross axis serves the principal reception room and connects via short link blocks to the double-banked bedroom blocks forming the outer arms of the H. The main range rises to three storeys, containing the lounge and other public rooms facing south, with services on the north side of the corridor and staircases at either end providing access to bedrooms above. The kitchen and service areas with accommodation flank the dining room to the rear. The bedroom blocks for single officers are arranged double-banked, with service rooms on the inner sides. The Mess accommodates 98 officers, with quarters for 72.

All windows are timber sashes with glazing bars, set flush with voussoirs and stone sills. The steep hipped roofs rise from a small box eaves, with some sections emphasised by raised flush parapets. The stacks are severely rectangular with flush cappings. A very small plinth runs around the base, with a plain string course above the first floor on the three-storey building.

The main building extends 23 bays, with the central unit of 11 bays slightly stepped forward and topped with a raised parapet. The returns measure six bays. Most windows contain 12 panes, but the ground floor features very large 28-pane units, with narrower 21-pane windows in bays 7, 10, 14 and 17. All ground floor windows have keystones extending up to the string course. At first floor level, cantilevered stone balustraded balconies project from bays 3-4 and 20-21, and also from the central three bays, above a three-arched arcade on panelled pilasters with moulded architraves. This arcade stands on a full-width stone landing leading to set-back paired panelled doors beneath an interlace fanlight, flanked by arched sashes. Windows serving the first floor balconies are extended to 15 panes and have moulded stone architraves with keystones. Four narrow but deep stacks rise from the roof slope above the central section.

The rear of this range forms a shallow U-plan with two-bay arms and a small stack at the internal angles. Windows to the rear are variously 12-pane or smaller service lights. Attached to the rear outer corners of the range are two-storey pavilions in three bays, each with a pyramidal roof. The left (west) pavilion serves as the kitchen and has two very lofty stacks near the roof apex.

On each side of the central range, a single-storey link contains three pairs of glazed French windows opening onto a full-width stone terrace. The two-storey bedroom wings are practically identical, measuring 15 by 3 bays, with a parapet raised above the central five bays. This central section includes a 20-pane sash above a pair of doors in a moulded architrave. Above the parapet are five segmental dormers with 12-pane sashes, lead roofs and tile-hung cheeks. The inner faces of the wings have five 12-pane sashes and a series of smaller service lights, with dormers similarly placed and detailed as on the front slopes.

Set across the rear, in alignment with the two pavilions and linked to them by five-bay flat-roofed sections, stands the dining room—a plain rectangle with a hipped roof and parapets. It features five large 40-pane arched sashes with radial heads, linked by a plain string and flanked by small glazed doors beneath plain sunk panels, all opening onto a stone terrace on two steps. The ends are plain, with windows repeating on each side of the lobby on the inner side. Low stone walls enclose service yards.

Inside, the entrance lobby and hall feature high polished oak panelling, with glazed doors to plain fanlights giving onto the long cross-corridor, which also has arched openings. The plain plastered ceiling has a moulded cornice. The lobby to the dining room also has polished panelling and arched sashes to small light wells. Wide square-headed openings lead to the dining room, which is lit by the five large windows on the far side. A shaped projecting balcony sits above this entry, with a deep set-back gallery. The dining room has a deep coved plaster ceiling on a moulded cornice, a picture rail at arch-springing height, and a moulded skirting.

The major public rooms at the front have deep compartmental plastered ceilings and beams, with glazed doors to the corridor. Two rooms include a bold fire surround with polished overmantel, bolection-moulded marble opening and faience tiles. A smaller room includes an Arts and Crafts style surround in painted softwood, incorporating a high mantel and panelled recess, with a copper hood and tiling. At each end of the block is a modest open-well staircase with solid balustrade in plywood, square newels, and corresponding wall panelling.

As is typical on RAF bases, the Mess stands somewhat apart from the remainder of the buildings and has its own private entrance gates from the minor road to the south. For such a large building it is handled with simple dignity, embodying to a unique degree the improved architectural quality associated with the post-1934 Expansion Period of the RAF. Detailing is restrained throughout, but massing, spacing and proportions are carefully considered, in the neo-Georgian style favoured at this period and influenced by the impact of the Royal Fine Arts Commission, especially through the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens.

Hullavington opened on 6th June 1937 as a Flying Training Station and is in every respect the key station most strongly representative of the improved architectural quality characteristic of the air bases developed under the post-1934 expansion of the RAF. Its position in the west of England alongside other training and maintenance bases also prompted its selection in 1938 as one of a series of Aircraft Storage Units for the storage of vital reserves destined for the operational front line.

By the 1930s, the issue of airbase design had become inextricably bound with that of national identity, from the Moderne styles found in Finland and Italy to the self-consciously traditional style adopted for 1930s German training bases. In Britain, and in contrast to the more stridently modern styles for civil terminal architecture, the planners for the post-1934 expansion of the RAF were required to soften the impact of new bases on the landscape by politicians mindful of public concerns over the issues of rearmament and the pace of environmental change. The Air Ministry's main consultant in these matters was the Royal Fine Arts Commission. The result, for the first generation of bases constructed after 1934, was a blend of Garden City planning for married quarters, neo-Georgian propriety for the barracks and other domestic buildings, and a watered-down Moderne style for the technical buildings. In contrast to earlier layouts, which the Royal Fine Arts Commission considered too disorderly, an axial layout on Beaux-Arts principles directed the overall concept at Hullavington. The facing of the buildings in Cotswold stone was the probable result of consultation with the Wiltshire branch of the Council for the Protection of Rural England.

The Air Ministry's official account ('Works', published in 1956) includes several photographs of the completed base. In line with the Royal Fine Arts Commission's recommendations, domestic buildings are designed in a broadly neo-Georgian style, using timber double-hung sashes, with elevations presented in carefully-considered areas of wall and window, with regularity of layout and the comfortable proportions characteristic of the period. Technical buildings use standard steel casements with horizontal bars, but again there is meticulous attention to layout and detail, seen for instance in the grouping of rows of lights to a continuous drip course and the neatly finished flush copings. The influence of the current Art Deco style is particularly evident in the water and boiler house towers and in some of the interior detail. The Officers' Mess, the largest of the domestic buildings, is set apart from the remainder, near the southern edge of the station and with its own gated entry from a minor public road. The Aircraft Storage Unit, with its planets of hangars dispersed around the edge of the flying field, was one of a series planned by the Air Ministry in 1936 and mostly grafted onto Flying Training Schools, as here. In their construction they comprised the most structurally advanced building types erected by the Air Ministry in the period up to 1945, and they also represented in their planning the first move towards the perimeter dispersal of aircraft which became a fundamental element in military airfield design.