Building 46 (Station Headquarters) England, UK

Listed Building Description

Text courtesy of Historic England. © Crown Copyright, reprinted under the Open Government License.

CATTERICK

1871/0/10004 MARNE BARRACKS (FORMER RAF CATTERICK) 01-DEC-05 Building 46 (Station Headquarters)

GV II Station offices. Dated 1935. By the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings. Drawing No 352/30. Stretcher bond brickwork, reinforced concrete floors, slate roof.

PLAN: Central hall and staircase to corridor and double-banked offices to each floor. A symmetrical 2-storey rectangular hipped range with short central T-arm to rear with flat roof, continued in one storey first with a double hipped unit to a central valley. Original accommodation included for the Commanding Officer, engineer office and clerks, also accounts section, waiting and orderly rooms, lecture room and library. Operations room in rear wing.

EXTERIOR: 2 storeys. 9-window front. Windows are all wooden sash in reveals to slightly cambered brick voussoir heads and concrete sub-sills; the principal windows have a 6-pane upper and plate glass lower sash. The front has three central bays slightly set forward, with a parapet or blocking-course carried above the eaves by approx 1m. This section has 3 sashes above a central pair of part-glazed doors in a stone pilaster surround with heavy flat entablature (with 1935 date) on brackets, with a sash each side. To each side are 3 further bays, with two close-set sashes on the short returns. A fascia and soffit eaves to the principal block is continued across the central section with its raised blocking. Centred to the ridge is a square louvred turret on a flared lead-clad apron, and with a square lead cupola with pinnacle. The central blocking carried asquare lead cupola with pinnacle. The central blocking carried a flagstaff. The back has 3 over one sashes each side of the centre section. The low rear wing has a slightly lower outer section, with smaller sashes partly blocked to S and W.

INTERIOR: original joinery and doors, with dog-leg staircase.

HISTORY: This is a typical but unusually little-altered example of the Station HQ buildings designed under the first phase of the inter-war expansion of the RAF, that commenced from 1923 under the leadership of Sir Hugh Trenchard. Its symmetrical style is directly related to barracks architecture of the late nineteenth century.

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