Building 22, Groves And Henderson Barracks

Building 22, Groves and Henderson Barracks

A multi-purpose building originally housing a medical centre, barber's shop, shoemaker's shop, tailor's shop, and general offices, now converted to offices. Built in 1920 to Air Ministry Directorate of Works drawings 268/20.

The building is constructed of red brick in stretcher bond with cavity walls, with some dressings in limestone ashlar. The roof is covered in concrete plain tiles (replacing the original slate) on timber trusses.

The plan is complex, with a wide symmetrical frontage. The central range is set back, with broad wings brought forward at each end, all topped by hipped roofs of steep pitch. The building lies to the east of the parade ground serving Groves and Henderson Barracks, centred to its cross axis and at a slightly lower level.

The parade ground frontage is arranged in 5:9:5 bays. Windows are generally 12-pane timber sash windows in reveals, with brick voussoir heads and concrete sills. The central 7 bays contain two sashes at each floor on each side of a central 3-bay section faced in ashlar. This section features 3 small paired sashes above a panelled and part-glazed door on 2 steps in a moulded architrave, flanked by a small paired sash on each side. Above the door sits a flat canopy with a moulded edge on brackets, and the moulding is carried round as a string-course in the stone dressing. This 7-bay section steps slightly forward from a single bay on each side. Beyond these, the wings step forward one bay further, with sashes to each level. The right wing has a large tripartite window to the ground floor.

The wings are in 5 bays, with widely spaced sashes to the first floor above a bold flat-roofed verandah projection expressed in ashlar with brick infill. The right-hand verandah has 3 open bays defined by paired square pilasters, flanked by a single bay slightly brought forward. This bay has a small sash in stone architrave plus blocking-course, with corner pilasters, and is returned at each end to a brick panel with a small sash. The left-hand verandah is similar but with one open bay only, with various sashes filling the remainder. The return at the right-hand end (south) has a single sash above a central plain door with overlight, flanked by two sashes to the left and one to the right. The opposite end is similar but with fewer sashes. The rear, which has a projecting central section, has sashes to the front.

Internally, the building features a dog-leg stair with ball finial to the square newel and iron balusters. Original joinery survives, including panelled doors in moulded architraves.

This prominent building housed important amenities required by occupants of the twelve adjacent barracks blocks. Its long frontage provides significant enclosure to the large parade ground. The north end is now partially concealed by a later structure, but it remains a vital unit within this comprehensive group, little changed externally since its completion in 1921.

The Groves and Henderson barracks were designed immediately after the First World War as a permanent base for the world's first independent air force and occupy an important place in the early development of British military air power. They were designed in the Domestic Revival style favoured by the War Office for army barracks from the 1870s onwards. Externally they remain complete except for the loss of their original slate roofing. The consistency of materials and treatment produces a harmonious and homogeneous ensemble, complemented by the planted woodlands to the east and south.

Although designed well before the self-conscious structures of the 1930s Expansion Period, when pronouncements of the Royal Fine Arts Commission began to influence RAF architectural development, these buildings demonstrate that considerable care was taken to avoid utilitarian severity. When the RAF was formed as the world's first independent air force in April 1918, General Sir Hugh Trenchard, its founding father and first Chief of Air Staff, concentrated on developing its strategic role as an offensive bomber force. His primary considerations lay in laying foundations for a technology-based service through the training of officers at Cranwell and technicians at Halton. Delays in permanent building construction at Cranwell until the early 1930s mean that only the Groves and Henderson Barracks at Halton relate to this critical period of development. They established a template for barracks building planning on RAF bases, marking a departure from the generally temporary accommodation provided for the Royal Flying Corps and from the planning of army barracks as practised since the Cardwell reforms of the 1870s.

Halton had been established as an army camp in September 1913 on part of a Rothschild estate, with tented accommodation replaced by wooden hutting for 12,000 men on three sites in early 1915. Plans to centralise technical training for the Royal Flying Corps—which had relied on instructional schools established at major towns and cities in 1915—had been underway from June 1917. RFC personnel took over the army camp in summer 1917, with £100,000 allocated for construction of a large workshops building. The site was greatly expanded in 1918 by purchase of the Rothschild mansion (listed grade II) as the officers' mess and parts of the estate for £112,000, well below market value.

Sir Hugh Trenchard, on his return as Chief of Air Staff in early 1919, viewed the establishment of central training establishments as fundamental to an independent technology-based service. Halton thus became home to the Aircraft Apprentice Scheme, in which boys of above-average educational attainment would receive 3 years of training, compared with the usual 5 years for civilian apprentices. The first arrivals came in 1922, moving into the Groves and Henderson barracks. Two reused seaplane hangars were built on the flying field in 1924, backed by various Bessoneau hangars, and a substantial hospital was added in 1927. Three further groups of barracks were built, with the last begun in 1936, together with a school and additional technical buildings. The three parts of the base remain separated by public roads and woodland planting, which formed part of the original scheme.

The Apprentice Scheme was temporarily suspended from 1939 to 1947, and the final intake graduated in 1993.