Building No 26 Henderson Sergeants' Mess (Groves And Henderson Barracks)

Former sergeants' mess at RAF Halton, built in 1920 to Air Ministry Directorate of Works drawings 220/20 and 344-345/20. Now used as a Chaplaincy Centre and formerly served as Wing Headquarters.

The building is a single-storey, near-square hipped block constructed in red brickwork in stretcher bond to cavity walls with some limestone ashlar dressings. The roof is covered with concrete plain tiles on timber trusses, replacing the original slate. The plan incorporates a small internal service yard, with a dining room, writing room, reading room, card room, billiard room, and kitchen with services to the rear. The mess is located adjacent to and forms part of the Henderson barracks at the east end of the main parade ground.

The front elevation features small-pane casements and glazing bar sashes combined with fixed lights above transoms. A bold hexagonal bay projects from each side of the centre, with casements framed by bold stone mullions and transom in 1:3:1 lights set flush to the brickwork below and carried up to a parapet with coping above the eaves line. At the centre is a pair of part-glazed panelled doors in a stone pilaster surround beneath a flat canopy on brackets, above which sits a small tripartite lunette in a brick arch. To each side of the doors is a tall narrow casement with stone transom, lintel and sill. The right return contains three sashes, the centre unit paired, and near the front is an external stack cropped at eaves level. The left return has a small extension with a casement beneath a swept-down section of roof, with the service yard entry behind it. A simple eaves box runs around the entire building.

The interior retains original joinery and panelled doors, including half-glazed hall doors set in semi-circular arched overlights, and features a panelled moving partition to the right.

This is one of two identical messes; the other (Building No 27) stands at the west end of the parade ground, associated with Groves Barracks. The buildings form part of a comprehensive group little changed externally since completion in 1922. 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, and remain externally complete except for the loss of slate roofing. The consistency of materials and treatment produces a harmonious and homogeneous ensemble, backed by planted woodlands to the east and south.

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 focus lay in establishing a technology-based service through officer training at Cranwell and technician training at Halton. Delays in building permanent structures at Cranwell until the early 1930s mean that only the Groves and Henderson barracks at Halton relate to this critical period of RAF development. They established a template for barracks planning on RAF bases, marking a departure from the temporary accommodation of the Royal Flying Corps and from army barracks planning since the Cardwell reforms of the 1870s.

Halton had been established as an army camp in September 1913 on part of a Rothschild estate. Tented accommodation was replaced by wooden hutting for 12,000 men on three sites in early 1915. Plans to centralise technical training for the Royal Flying Corps had been underway from June 1917, and 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 purchase of the Rothschild mansion (listed grade II) as the officers' mess and parts of the estate for £112,000, far below market value. Upon his return as Chief of Air Staff in early 1919, Trenchard viewed 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 received three years of training, compared with the usual five 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 Bessoneau tented hangars, and a substantial hospital was added in 1927. Three further groups of barracks were subsequently 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 was part of the original scheme. The Apprentice Scheme was temporarily suspended from 1939 to 1947, with the final intake graduating in 1993.