Mess Block Waltham Abbey, England
Listed Building Data
Mess Block has been designated a Grade II listed building in England with the following information, which has been imported from the National Heritage List for England. Please note that not all available data may be shown here, minor errors and/or formatting may have occurred during transcription, and some information may have become outdated since listing.
- List Entry ID
- 1390670
- Listing Type
- listed building
- Grade
- II
- Date Listed
- 27 February 2003
- Name
- MESS BLOCK
- Location
- MESS BLOCK, LIPPETTS HILL
- Parish
- Waltham Abbey
- District
- Epping Forest
- County
- Essex
- Grid Reference
- TQ 39815 97073
- Easting
- 539814.9000
- Northing
- 197072.7501
Listed Building Description
Text courtesy of Historic England. © Crown Copyright, reprinted under the Open Government License.
WALTHAM ABBEY
830/0/10033 LIPPITTS HILL 23-FEB-03 Mess block
GV II Mess block at Lippitts Hill. 1939-40 by the Ministry of Defence. Timber framed on brick plinth, pitched timber truss roofs covered in felt, forming nearly square plan with 'M' roof. Single storey. Metal casement windows with strong horizontal pattern. Timber plank double doors.
Interior has boarded ceiling and walls. The western half of the building is largely one main room, the mess itself. The base of the trusses can be seen below boarded ceilings. The southern entrance to the mess leads to a full-height space where the applied light scantling boards continue as in the walls in most of the Spider Block (q.v.). Eastern range contains kitchen.
This forms part of the group of buildings at ZE7 Lippitts Hill, one of Britain's premier heavy anti-aircraft gun sites during World War II. The battery was operational in January 1940, equipped with 3.7-inch guns, and in 1943 it was one of the sites operated by a mixed battery of men and women. At the end of 1943 the complex was handed over to the American forces and it was from this site, in March 1944, that the 184th Anti-Aircraft Artillery fired the first American guns in defence of London. The Americans moved to France in late 1944, and Lippitts Hill was converted to use as a German prisoner of war camp, until 1948. Between 1948 and 1951 the site was reorganised as an anti-nuclear command centre, controlling a regional group of anti-aircraft gun sites. Anti-aircraft defences were soon superseded by missile technology and the control centre was decommissioned in the late 1950s following the Government's adoption of a policy of nuclear deterrent. In 1960 the site became a Metropolitan Police training area, a function it retained until February 2003. Together, the listed buildings and the surviving gun emplacements and magazine (scheduled ancient monuments) the best preserved anti-aircraft gun site in England. The mess is a key, central element in the ensemble.
Sources MPP Report AA 44674/1 Essex CC and Colin Dobinson, Twentieth Century Fortifications in England, vol.1.3, 1996, pp.392-6. Fred Nash, Report for Essex County Council, which contains further references
