Officers' Mess And Quarters

This group comprises an Officers' Mess and nine detached four-room chalets, designed in 1913 with construction completed by mid-1914. The designer was probably D M Franklin, with drawings countersigned by Colonel A M Stuart, Assistant Director of Fortifications and Works. The buildings are constructed with softwood framing and asbestos-cement panel facings and linings, joints covered with painted softwood battens. Some masonry is used for gable ends, and all buildings are set on concrete levelling-slabs with a plinth offset. The roofs are clad in asbestos-cement slates.

Layout

The buildings are arranged around three sides of a large open grassed square. The Officers' Mess is positioned centrally on the north side, with two flanking chalets on each side and three on each of the returns. All are single-storey except for a small two-storey unit forming part of the Officers' Mess. The mess has a central entry and lobby with an internal vestibule leading to dining rooms on the right and a lounge, reading-room and billiard-room to the left, the last two located in a cross-wing. A transverse access corridor leads to rear kitchens and stores, with a gabled two-storey wing across the rear. Some later insertions have been made.

The chalets follow a standard pattern, except for chalet 11J. Each has a central entrance with two bedrooms on each side, a short transverse corridor, and a projecting service block to the rear set transversely through a short connecting link. The southeastern chalet, 11J, is similar but built to a T-plan with hipped roofs.

Exterior

All units are built to a coherent design with wooden sash windows set within a grid of vertical and horizontal battens framing the openings. There are sole-plates, sills, head-bands and vertical battens to panel widths. Gable-end fireplaces create masonry central sections that are rendered and set flush with adjacent panels.

The Officers' Mess has a central higher gable above a pair of part-glazed panelled doors with a five-pane overlight, flanked by small twelve-pane sashes. These are framed by four wooden pilasters and a weathered cornice returned to the short sides, all on a wide landing with three steps. Above the doors is a large decorative panel bearing the winged RAF emblem and the motto "Per Ardua ad Astra". The gable and returns feature extra decorative vertical battens. To the left and right are five and four large twelve-pane sashes respectively, with a further two on the left return, finishing with a plain gable end. To the right is a slightly projecting gable over two similar sashes, continued to a wing with three further sashes and a hipped outer end. Beyond this, the building links to former chalet 11F, which has a higher floor level and long narrow rendered wings (dating from circa 1942) brought forward on each side of a recessed centre. This centre has central panelled doors with two sashes on each side, then three on each inner return, and plain outer gables. The long left-hand return has two ridge dormer lights above two groups of five three-light clerestory windows and four deep twelve-pane sashes. The rear is complex, with some later flat-roofed insertions or additions, but includes an original two-storey accommodation block.

The chalets are very consistent in design. Each has a central pair of doors with a fielded panel beneath eight-pane glazing, and Doric pilasters with entasis curve leading to consoles carrying a moulded open pediment over a flat soffit. There are two sashes on each side and a single sash in the gable ends. The rear is similar, with a short link containing ledged, braced and battened doors leading to a cross-wing with three twelve-pane and two eight-pane sashes. Chalet 11J has an identical portico and door but with a single sash and a tripartite sash on each side, plus sashes and a door to the deep central rear wing.

Interior

Building 9, the Officers' Mess, retains many original five-panel doors in moulded architraves, deep moulded skirtings and moulded cornices. A small lobby with glazed inner doors leads to a large square inner ante-room flanked by paired glazed doors in architraves. To the rear is a pair of bold Roman Doric columns in-antis with wall responds, carrying a full entablature. The long dining room to the right is divided into two parts with a proscenium/curtain divider. There are two good fireplaces with full-height overmantels and tile inserts to pilaster surrounds. Iron tension-bars are exposed below asbestos-panelled canted ceilings. At the far end, steps rise to a further dining area with a bar, plus a series of smaller rooms, all formed in the former chalet 11F, now connected to the main building.

To the left of the ante-room is the long lounge, also with a fireplace and surround. Beyond are the smaller reading-room and billiard-room, the latter with a top-light in two sections divided by an elliptical arch. Throughout this building the detail is of a high order, and in the principal rooms is mainly original work.

The chalets generally retain much of their original fittings and trim, including panelled doors in moulded architraves, deep moulded skirtings and built-in cupboards to the bedrooms. The small entrance lobbies have glazed inner doors and tiled floors.

Historical Significance

This group is of outstanding historical interest and striking architectural form, comprising some of the earliest extant buildings erected for the Royal Flying Corps. Construction commenced in summer 1913 and was completed under the superintendence of Captain B H O Armstrong by June 1914. The drawings are countersigned by Colonel A M Stuart, Assistant Director of Fortifications and Works and, after 1918, the Air Ministry's Director of Works. The formal arrangement, with the Officers' Mess set axially to a wide open forecourt and balanced by the dignified bedroom chalets, demonstrates the high standards sought by the War Office. Their planning is clearly related to 19th-century cavalry barracks. The separation of mess facilities from accommodation represented a departure from mainstream army practice and anticipated a distinctive feature of air base planning. The entrance to the mess is surmounted by the RFC motto and emblem. The mess interior is the most elaborate, but the chalet rooms are all provided with standard features including cornicing and fitted cupboards. This group is the first encountered on entering the hilltop site, with very little visible alteration externally or internally and only minimal extension to the rear of the mess in the service areas.

With Upavon and Larkhill, Netheravon comprises one of three sites around the Army training ground at Salisbury Plain relating to the crucial formative phase in the development of military aviation in Europe prior to the First World War. It was the first new squadron station selected and developed by the RFC's Military Wing, the second being Montrose in Scotland, where original hangars (listed grade A) have survived. It was also the second new site built by the Royal Flying Corps, the first being the Central Flying School at Upavon, established in June 1912. A first move was made here prior to Christmas 1912, and in June 1913 the men and machines of the Royal Flying Corps' 3 and 4 Squadrons were relocated from Farnborough to Netheravon. At that time the technical buildings were ready, but tented accommodation was still in use as the barracks had not been completed. Netheravon, being one of the stations developed by the Military Wing of the RFC, also hosted a general mobilisation of the RFC's squadrons from Montrose in Scotland to Farnborough before they went to France with the Expeditionary Force in August 1914. From autumn 1914 the base was increasingly used for training, playing an important role in preparing some of the first squadrons for aerial combat. From June 1918 it was used as a Training Depot Station, and special hangars were provided for the Handley-Page 0/400 bombers which were the cornerstone of Trenchard's Inter-Allied bomber force. Number 1 Flying School remained here, with some interruptions, until 1942, after which it was largely used by RAF Transport Command for airborne exercises and the preparation of gliders for the invasion of Europe in 1944. The Army Air Corps have been based here from 1966, including Territorial Army units from 1995.

In contrast to the ad hoc planning of Upavon, Netheravon was developed as a prototype flying base with the distinctions between domestic and technical camps, whose buildings had to fulfil a wide range of requirements from workshops to recreational facilities and ordering by rank, which subsequently characterised the planning of RFC and RAF stations. This was of critical importance at this time, as flying had been included with other military activities and there was no established idea of what an air station required. Before the completion of these buildings, the Bustard Inn at Rollestone provided accommodation for these early army flyers. In this early period the War Office issued specifications for building types against which contractors submitted tenders, the aim being to achieve a degree of standardisation. These first designs were completed by Captain B H O Armstrong, head of the FW1a and, from June 1913, FW2 (with a brief to produce standard designs) branch of the Directorate of Fortifications and Works, who remained at the heart of army aviation until the formation of the RAF in 1918. The softwood frame construction chosen for the buildings, with cover strips placed over the asbestos-cement panels, indicates the Directorate of Fortifications and Works' intention to provide a pattern for repetitive reuse. The western domestic site is divided between the officers' accommodation and airmen's barracks. The eastern site still has some technical buildings although the group of six original hangars (later augmented to 15) has all disappeared, the last remaining until at least 1959. It is remarkable how the layout of pre-1914 buildings on the domestic site has been retained intact, and how the principles upon which the base layout was established—a combination of topography and its historical context as a prototype site—have formed the template within which subsequent phases of rebuilding in the inter-war period (the A-type hangars and control tower) and development have operated.

Whilst the remains of the technical site at Netheravon are fragmentary, the domestic site has survived in a complete state of preservation. It has the best-preserved suite of barracks buildings of any of the 301 bases in the United Kingdom occupied by the RAF in November 1918, these in turn being modelled on standard types of Victorian cavalry barracks. There are no sites of this degree of preservation surviving from any of the other combatant nations of the First World War, with the notable exception of the combined mess and hangar at Schleissheim, sited just to the north of Munich and established in 1912 as the base of the Royal Bavarian Flying Corps. It is significant in this context to note that the only other examples of pre-1919 domestic buildings identified for listing are located at Upavon and Duxford, where one barracks hut has survived within the context of a key site. With the exception of the Officers' Mess and Chalets, which have retained important interior details, the buildings on the domestic site are principally of interest for their external completeness and relationship to each other as part of this planned group.