Building 68 (Watch Office)

CATTERICK

1871/0/10001 MARNE BARRACKS (FORMER RAF CATTERICK) 01-DEC-05 Building 68 (Watch Office)

GV II Watch office. 1927, by the Air Ministry's Directorate of Buildings and Works (drawing no. 2072/26). Stretcher bond brick with gabled slate roof. Single storey. Gabled S front has bay window with steel casements to duty pilot's office. E elevation has soldier arch over central half-glazed door, providing access to duty pilot's room to S and rest room to N. Interior: plain. HISTORY: This building comprises a very rare surviving example of a pre-1934 watch office, an early form of control tower to which pilots reported, and is given added significance by its historical associations (see advice for Officers' Mess) and by virtue of the fact that it groups with the later 'tower' design (Building 54) to its east. The development of radio communication, and the increasing need to organise the flying field into different zones for take-off, landing and taxiing, brought with it an acceptance that movement on the airfield needed to be controlled from a single centre: control towers thus evolved from the simple duty pilot's watch office to the tower design of 1934 and integration of traffic control and weather monitoring in the Art Deco horizontality of the Watch Office with Meteorological Section of 1939.

For further notes on Catterick, see description for Building 31 (Officers' Mess and Quarters)