Building No 29 (Groves Mess) Groves And Henderson Barracks

Building No 29 (Groves Mess), Groves and Henderson Barracks, RAF Halton

This is a former dining room and cookhouse built in 1920 to a design by the Air Ministry Directorate of Works (drawing 61/20). The building is constructed in red brick laid in stretcher bond with cavity walls, limestone ashlar dressings, and concrete plain tiles on timber trusses (the tiles replacing the original slate).

The building presents a symmetrical two-storey range with a wide frontage and hipped roofs. It is entered from the parade ground via set-back wings at each end, with further entrances on the returns to the main staircases. The interior was designed to accommodate two large dining rooms, each seating 474 airmen per floor, together with corresponding servery and washing areas and latrines. The kitchens and service areas occupy the rear.

The main front comprises 3 plus 7 plus 3 bays. Windows are predominantly plain glazed two-light casements with mullion and transom, set beneath half-brick soldier-course lintels. The central seven bays feature a decorative oriel window in stone, with 1:3:1-light small-pane casements to stone mullions, rising above a deep apron. Below the oriel runs an entablature carried above the eaves-line, crowned by a small brick parapet (probably added later). The oriel rests on a plan base-course forming a canopy supported by three brackets, above a central sunk panel with flat surround, all at sill height on a stepped plinth. Narrow single lights flank this panel at ground floor.

The end bays are stepped back with a lower eaves-line, containing two small two-light casements and a deeper staircase window. A pair of panelled doors in a painted stone surround sits beneath a flat square canopy on brackets, with a tripartite small-pane lunette in a brick arch above. Each return features a similarly detailed doorway without lunettes, followed by a tall narrow two-bay section slightly stepped forward. This section contains two bulls-eye windows above two-light standard casements with small panes at both ground and first floor levels, with a stone plinth taken to ground-floor sill height.

The entrance halls are articulated by classical pilasters, each with an elaborate imperial stair featuring an openwork cast-iron newel. Original joinery, including panelled doors, survives throughout.

Building No 29 lies to the west of the parade ground at the edge of the Groves group. It is identical to the building serving Henderson barracks (Building No 28) and represents a major element in a comprehensive group that reflects consistent design philosophy and detailing across the wider complex. 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 design adopts the Domestic Revival style favoured by the War Office for army barracks from the 1870s onwards. Externally they remain complete apart from the loss of their original slate roofing. The consistency of materials and treatment creates a harmonious and homogeneous ensemble, reinforced by planted woodlands to the east and south.

Although designed before the consciously considered structures of the 1930s Expansion Period, when Royal Fine Arts Commission pronouncements influenced RAF architectural development, these buildings demonstrate that considerable care was taken to avoid utilitarian austerity.

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 the foundations for a technology-based service through the training of officers at Cranwell and technicians at Halton. Delays in building permanent structures at Cranwell until the early 1930s meant that only the Groves and Henderson barracks at Halton relate to this critical period. They established a template for barracks planning on RAF bases, representing a departure from the temporary accommodation provided for the Royal Flying Corps and from army barracks planning as developed 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 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 the purchase of the Rothschild mansion (listed Grade II) as the officers' mess and parts of the estate for £112,000, considerably below market value.

When Sir Hugh Trenchard returned as Chief of Air Staff in early 1919, he 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 would receive three years of training, compared with the usual five years for civilian apprentices. The first arrivals came in 1922, occupying the Groves and Henderson barracks. Two reused seaplane hangars were constructed 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 subsequently built, 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, and the final intake graduated in 1993.