Building No 28 (Henderson Mess) Groves And Henderson Barracks

Former dining rooms and cookhouse built in 1920 to an Air Ministry Directorate of Works drawing. The building is constructed in red brickwork in stretcher bond with cavity walls, with some dressings in limestone ashlar. The roof is covered in concrete plain tiles, which replaced the original slate, laid on timber trusses.

The building presents a wide frontage as a symmetrical two-storey range with hipped roofs. It is entered from the parade ground through set-back wings at each end, and also from the returns to the main staircases. The design accommodates two large dining rooms, each seating 474 airmen per floor, with corresponding servery and washing areas and latrines. The kitchens and service areas are located to the rear.

The exterior features windows that are mainly plain glazed two-light casements with mullion and transom, set in half-brick soldier-course lintels. The main front is arranged in a 3 + 7 + 3 bay pattern. At the centre is a decorative oriel in stone with 1:3:1-light small-pane casements to stone mullions above a deep apron. An entablature is carried above the eaves-line and crowned by a small brick parapet, probably added later. The oriel is supported on a plinth-base course as a canopy, carried on three brackets, above a central sunk panel with flat surround. Narrow single lights flank the panel at ground floor level. The end bays are stepped back with a lower eaves-line, containing two small two-light casements and a deeper staircase window, above a pair of panelled doors in painted stone surround beneath a flat square canopy on brackets. Below this is a tripartite small-pane lunette in a brick arch. Each return features a similarly detailed doorway without lunettes, followed by a tall narrow two-bay section, slightly stepped forward, with two bulls-eye windows above two-light standard casements with small panes at ground and first floor levels. A stone plinth extends to ground-floor sill level in this section.

The interior has seen little later intervention. The broad queen-post roof is left exposed. Entrance halls are articulated by classical pilasters, and each contains an elaborate imperial stair with openwork cast-iron newel. Original joinery survives, including panelled doors.

The building lies to the east of the parade ground at the edge of the Henderson barracks group. It is identical to Building No 29, the corresponding structure serving the Groves barracks, and the two form major elements of a comprehensive group reflecting the same design philosophy and detailing as many of the other units on the base. The building has remained little changed externally since its 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. 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 army barracks from the 1870s. They are externally complete except for the loss of their original slate roofing. The consistency of materials and treatment produces a harmonious and homogeneous ensemble, enhanced by the planted woodlands to the east and south. Although designed well before the self-conscious structures of the 1930s Expansion Period, when 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, General Sir Hugh Trenchard, its founding father and first Chief of Air Staff, pursued a strategy centred on developing its strategic role as an offensive bomber force during the period of retrenchment following the Armistice until the early 1920s. His primary focus was on laying the foundations for a technology-based service through the training of officers at Cranwell and technicians at Halton. Delays in constructing permanent buildings 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 the planning of barracks buildings 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. Tented accommodation was replaced by wooden hutting for 12,000 men across 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 moved to take over the army camp in summer 1917, with £100,000 allocated for constructing 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. Upon his return as Chief of Air Staff in early 1919, Trenchard viewed the establishment of central training establishments as the fundamental building block of an independent technology-based service. Halton accordingly became home to the Aircraft Apprentice Scheme, in which boys of above-average educational attainment would receive 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, backed by various tented Bessoneau hangars, and a substantial hospital was added in 1927. Three further groups of barracks were subsequently constructed, with 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.

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