Building No 24 (Airmens' Institute) Groves And Henderson Barracks

Building No 24 (Airmens' Institute), Groves and Henderson Barracks

A former Regimental Institute built in 1920 to Air Ministry Directorate of Works drawings 337/20 and 369-371/20. The building is constructed in red brickwork with stretcher bond cavity walls and limestone ashlar dressings, with a concrete plain tile roof (replacing original slate) on timber trusses.

The structure is a compact, complex two-storey building with stepped hipped roofs. It presents a long main front featuring a projecting central open pediment, with deep wings extending to a complex rear elevation containing service courtyards, a lofty kitchen, and various service and storage spaces. Staircases and wing entrances are accessed from the pediment and end returns. The principal rooms on each level include a dining room, lounge, reading and billiards rooms, and a central kitchen to the rear. Originally, a small clock tower with cupola stood on the ridge behind the pedimented centre, but this has been removed. The building served the Henderson barracks group and is located in the north-east corner of the complex, opposite barracks block Building No 17.

The exterior features timber glazing-bar sashes in plain reveals, except where set to stone surrounds. Ground-floor windows also have lights above transoms. The central pediment and staircase units on the returns contain small-pane casements set to stone surround with mullions and transoms. The front elevation spans 7 bays, twice stepped back from the centre, with the outer single bays at a lower eaves level. The large central window contains 6 lights to each floor arranged in a 3 by 2 grid, with a stone apron featuring a raised central panel between floors. Within the pediment sits a small oculus in brick voussoirs with flush stone keys at the cardinal points. On each side of centre, two bays contain sashes with overlights at both floor levels.

The returns feature a narrow sash above a pair of panelled, part-glazed doors in a painted pilaster surround beneath a flat canopy on brackets. Above these is a tripartite small-pane lunette set in a brick arch. This door detail is repeated for doors beyond a projecting staircase unit, which has its own separately expressed hipped roof and a large 3 by 3-light gridded casement window in stone surround with mullions and transoms, continued downward as an ashlar panel with a raised central unit. Above the doors beyond the staircase are 3 small sashes, then a 2-bay slightly projecting wing. The window pattern continues to the rear in the wings, flanking a high central kitchen with roof lantern, with small courtyards and service rooms on either side. At the west end is a 5-bay single-storey hipped range, returned in 2 bays. Roofs project to modest box eaves throughout.

The interior features entrance halls articulated by classical pilasters, each containing an elaborate imperial staircase with openwork cast-iron newels. Original joinery survives, including panelled doors.

The Groves and corresponding Henderson Institutes are near-identical buildings, each serving eight adjacent barracks blocks. They are major elements of a comprehensive group, reflecting the same design philosophy and detailing as many other units on the site. The building has changed little externally since completion in 1922 except for the loss of the turret and new roof coverings.

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. They occupy an important place in the early development of British military air power. The buildings were designed in the Domestic Revival style favoured by the War Office for its army barracks from the 1870s onwards, and remain externally complete except for the loss of their slate roofing. The consistency of materials and treatment produces a harmonious and homogeneous ensemble, reinforced by the planted woodlands to the east and south. Although designed well before the self-conscious structures of the 1930s Expansion Period, when pronouncements by the Royal Fine Arts Commission influenced 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, and during the period of retrenchment from the Armistice until the early 1920s, its founding father and first Chief of Air Staff, General Sir Hugh Trenchard, concentrated on developing its strategic role as an offensive bomber force. His priorities centred on laying foundations for a technology-based service through officer training at Cranwell and technician training at Halton. Delays in permanent building at Cranwell until the early 1930s mean that only the Groves and Henderson Barracks at Halton relate to this critical period. They established a template for barracks 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 relied on instructional schools established at major towns and cities in 1915—had been underway from June 1917. RFC personnel moved to take 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 the purchase of the Rothschild mansion (listed grade II) as the officers' mess and parts of the estate for £112,000, far below market value. Sir Hugh Trenchard, returning as Chief of Air Staff in early 1919, viewed the establishment of central training establishments as the fundamental building block of an independent technology-based service. Halton thus became the home of the Aircraft Apprentice Scheme, in which boys of above-average educational attainment received 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, supported by various tented Bessoneau hangars, and a substantial hospital was added in 1927. Three further groups of barracks were constructed, the last begun in 1936, along 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 and is now an important aspect of the layout. The Apprentice Scheme was temporarily suspended from 1939 to 1947, and the final intake graduated in 1993.