St george's memorial chapel statement of significance

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance Prepared for the London Borough of Bromley July 2015

Alan Baxter

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance Prepared for the London Borough of Bromley July 2015

Contents 1.0 Introduction ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������1 2.0 History �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������4 3.0 Significance ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������26 Appendix 1: HER map �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������35 Appendix 2: Statutory List entries �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������37

Alan Baxter

1.0 Introduction 1.2 Purpose of this report

The present-day Biggin Hill Airport is substantially the historic Royal Air Force (RAF) aerodrome, RAF Biggin Hill, established by the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) in 1917 and operational until 1959.

LB Bromley has commissioned a team of specialists led by Alan Baxter Limited (ABA) to produce a Statement of Significance for St George’s Chapel and the dispersal hut at Biggin Hill Airport, and a Condition Survey of the dispersal hut — the latter to include a condition analysis and costed options assessment for repairs, surveys and structural engineering report. This suite of documents and drawings amounts to a foundational statement of the history and heritage significance of the two structures, an analysis of the condition and conservation requirements of the dispersal hut, and an options appraisal, anticipated impact analysis and heritage strategy for the repair and relocation of the hut in the precinct of the Chapel as part of the development of a Memorial Museum.

The cessation of funding from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to the RAF-maintained St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill, announced in 2014, coincides with the very end of the viable life of the structure at Biggin Hill Airport’s former East Camp known as the dispersal hut.

Of all the buildings in the former RAF aerodrome, the Chapel and the dispersal hut are most closely associated with the Battle of Britain, the defining aerial battle fought in July to October 1940 in resistance to Hitler’s drive to occupy Western Europe. In the Battle, RAF Biggin Hill played a key role — it was named ‘The Strongest Link’.

In developing a plan to overcome the threats to the continued existence of the two structures, London Borough of Bromley (LB Bromley) has an opportunity to conserve and sustain both of these irreplaceable historic buildings for the foreseeable future, on a single site of enhanced heritage significance.

LB Bromley expects to acquire the Chapel and its precinct from the MoD in 2016/17. The Borough granted the civil airport to Biggin Hill Airport Limited (BHAL) in 1974 on a 125-year lease. BHAL owns the dispersal hut, but has agreed to its relocation by the Council to the Chapel site. The Treasury has awarded £1m towards LB Bromley’s creation of a Battle of Britain heritage complex at the Chapel site, to comprise the conserved Chapel and a Memorial Museum with visitor centre and facilities.

Alan Baxter

The team comprises ABA Conservation, with Malcolm Fryer Architects, Andrew Morton Associates (quantity surveyors), James Brennan Associates (chartered surveyors) and ABA’s Structural Engineering team. Their work has been completed through site visits, archival research and off-site research, analysis and reporting between April and June 2015.

1.3 Structure and authorship Statement of Significance This Statement of Significance sets out a concise but wide-ranging history of the Memorial Chapel set in the context of the history and development of RAF Biggin Hill. This is the evidence which informs the Statement of Significance with which this document concludes.

The Statement of Significance was researched and written by Alfie Stroud of ABA. All photographs are copyright of ABA unless otherwise credited. All drawings and graphic design were produced by Vera Fabiankova and Julio Mendoza, also of ABA.

Heritage Impact Assessment The suite of documents produced for this inception stage of LB Bromley’s project concludes with ABA’s Heritage Impact Assessment (HIA). This is a short strategic report which identifies critical considerations for conserving the two historic buildings, considering their fullest history and heritage significance, in anticipation of the relocation of the hut and development of the Memorial Museum. It ends with eight modest recommendations which may help to direct the next stage of the process.

Acknowledgements Thanks for assistance with the research, consideration and preparation of this work are gratefully given to Breda Daly, Roger J C Thomas and Matthew Cooper, all of Historic England, for their help with research and review. The RAF Archive Hendon gave valuable research assistance. Kristen Alexander and Erik Mannings kindly responded to email queries about their relatives who served at Biggin Hill. Laurie Chester, the Custodian of St George’s Memorial Chapel, supported our investigation of the Chapel and cares for it knowledgeably and diligently. Katy Woolcott and Colin Hitchins of Biggin Hill Airport Limited also provided invaluable information and support on the airport site. Dr Howard Tuck of Minerva Specialist Projects and Col Phil

1.0 Introduction

1.1 Background to the project

Wilson of the Royal Engineers were also consulted.

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

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Site Plan St George’s Chapel precinct; site of Memorial Museum

1.0 Introduction

Dispersal Hut (not original location)

Ordnance Survey © Crown Copyright 2015. All rights reserved. Licence number 100022432. Plotted Scale - 1:6000

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St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

Alan Baxter

The Chapel precinct: identification of buildings N N

Site of MG Works

Central Heating Range boiler-house and chimney

North extension

St George’s Room

Gate Guardians

1.0 Introduction

Car park

Air Cadets’ Building, former RC Chapel (site of Parachute Packers’ Hut)

St George’s Memorial Chapel

Nave Screen Memorial Garden

Bell tower

OASC building

BIGGIN HILL STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE

PLAN

Alan Baxter

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015 1711/200

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2.0 History

Biggin Hill’s early association with aviation is owed to its elevated situation, of about 200m above sea level on a solid bed of clay above the mist-prone vale to the south and west. The land on which the Airport stands was historically part of the manor of Aperfield, owned by the Earls of Stanhope, part of the parish of Cudham; the village of Cudham is about two miles to the east. Several houses stood in the manor, including Aperfield Court and Cudham Lodge, a Tudor establishment rebuilt in the eighteenth century. The tenanted farm stood on a site near the middle of what is today the Airport’s main runway. Frederick Henry Dougal, an entrepreneur, acquired part of the manor in 1895. He sold inexpensive plots for development, eventually led to the development of the modern village of Biggin Hill, south of the Airport.

John Westacott was farming Cudham Lodge at the outbreak of the First World War. Even before 1914, he may have allowed private pilots to make use of a very large flat field on the east side of the Westerham Road, spanning the area between what is now the south end of West Camp and Churchill Way. At the corner of this field, at the junction of Westerham Road and Saltbox Hill, stood the ‘Old Salt Box’ — a pair of eighteenth-century farm cottages with very steeply sloping roofs, which were said to be a helpful landmark for pilots.

The shocking potential of the aeroplane as an engine of war was revealed during the First World War (1914–18). The development of Biggin Hill as a military aerodrome reflects the exploitation of that potential, in three district phases.

Image: National Library of Scotland, http://maps.nls.uk/view/101428869)

2.0 History

Biggin Hill’s official role in military aviation places it among the oldest aerodromes in Britain, pre-dating even its official opening on 14 February 1917 as a landing ground of the Royal Flying Corps. While it retains a powerful cultural resonance founded in events which occurred 75 years ago, the site’s century-long history of innovation in aviation and associated technologies also persists.

A 1909 OS map of the Biggin Hill area, showing the large fields attached to Cudham Lodge, visible near the top centre, and the Saltbox cottages, where a road to Cudham Lodge joined the curve in the Westerham Road.

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St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

Alan Baxter

2.1 The Royal Flying Corps Aerodrome and the First World War Radio With the permission of the Stanhopes, the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) — the air arm of the British Army — opened a landing ground at Cudham Lodge Farm in 1914. Early in the First World War, which broke out the same summer, emergency night-time landings were taking place. Experimentation with radio technology followed, with testing stations and training courses established in former houses around the manor.

2.0 History

In 1916, work to establish a more permanent aerodrome complex began on Cudham Lodge lands on the east side of Westerham Road.

Aperfield Court was formally acquired by the War Office in 1917 for the installation of a transmitter and to house ground control of aircraft at the developing Biggin Hill Aerodrome. Biggin Hill was inaugurated as a Radio Signals Unit in February 1917, with the RFC’s Wireless Testing Park relocated from Brooklands aerodrome in Surrey.

These developments met with an intensification of the German aerial assault on Britain, which from 1917 involved aeroplanes as well as airships. Britain responded with enhanced defence in the air, and Biggin Hill Aerodrome was established as part of an inner patrol zone in a coordinated London Air Defence Area. No. 141 Squadron had been formed in January 1918 and moved from Rochford to Biggin Hill in February to operate its new flights of Bristol Fighters, each decorated with the squadron motif of a red cockerel. In May 1918, No. 140 Squadron formed at Biggin Hill with more Bristol Fighters.

At the Armistice in November 1918, air defence capacity was wound down, and subsequently squadrons passed through Biggin Hill but rarely settled.

Image: National Library of Scotland, http://maps.nls.uk/view/101428863

Air defence

A 1930 OS map of the Biggin Hill area. The map does not show the 1920s development which had already taken place to establish West Camp. It does show, unlabelled, the earlier development connected to the Aerodrome in the area later to become South Camp, near Aperfield and Biggin Hill village, and the properties acquired by the RFC and RAF from the Stanhope estate.

Alan Baxter

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

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2.2 The Royal Air Force and the development of Biggin Hill as a defensive station

2.0 History

Offence vs. defence On 1 April 1918, the RFC and the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) merged to create the Royal Air Force (RAF). The lessons of the German raids in the First World War were rapidly learned by the RAF under its founding commander, first Chief of the Air Staff, Major-General Sir Hugh (later Viscount) Trenchard. Most of the 301 air bases which existed at the Armistice were closed, but between 1923 and 1939, 100 were built in permanent fabric. Trenchard’s leadership of the RAF until 1930 established it as an independent military force. His plan envisaged bomber stations concentrated in East Anglia and Oxfordshire, with a 15-mile-deep ring of fighter stations around London to the south and east. Thus, Trenchard’s decisions about its operational development were instrumental in the growth of Biggin Hill Aerodrome into its fullest form as an RAF station. The early RFC Station in what would later be South Camp became part of a War Department Anti-Aircraft Defence School in the 1920s.

However, Trenchard persistently pursued his conviction — shared with Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin — the offensive capacity of the RAF bombers should have strategic priority over fighter defence.

His successor, Sir Edward Ellington, implemented ‘Scheme F’ which further expanded bomber capacity relative to fighter power. It was not until the tenure of Sir Cyril Newall after 1937 that the dissenting view of Sir Hugh Dowding, first commanding officer of the newly established RAF Fighter Command, began to win out, with important consequences for the history of Biggin Hill Aerodrome.

Aerodrome layout and architecture in the early twentieth century The earliest RFC aerodromes were simply a flat grass field with hangars for aircraft storage and a few operational buildings, with little systematic thinking behind their planning.

As the RAF formalised aerial military operations during the 1920s, a standard layout emerged based on the defensive approaches adopted during the First World War: aircraft were housed in hangars scattered around the perimeter of an ‘omni-directional’ flying field (that is, without runways). They were dispersed like other technical and domestic structures, against the possibility of a single knock-out attack.

During intensive rearmament in the late 1930s, when the RAF’s biplane fighters were replaced en masse by modern Hurricanes and Spitfires, the growing number of aircraft and the need for speedy scrambling, led to a more rational and consistent approach to aerodrome layout.

In parallel with these operational considerations, a modest new architecture developed to provide for Britain’s new military infrastructure but also to address the need for poplar reassurance and stability amid rapid change; the resulting idiom of clean, brick neo-Georgian barracks and mess buildings, complemented by utilitarian brick, steel and concrete airfield structures, is widespread among 1930s aerodrome survivals. The listed examples at Biggin Hill are typical. (English Heritage, 2000) Expansion of RAF stations was rigorously organised and overseen by the Air Ministry Works Directorate. Building types had unique reference numbers, and their layout was generally systematic: with squadrons routinely redeployed to

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St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

new stations, personnel gained a real advantage in knowing their way around the new site. Variation and accommodation of the landscape was only really found in domestic buildings — officers’ messes, for instance, were generally given a southern outlook over open country if this was possible.

Camouflage strategy became an important influence of aerodrome planning as war approached, with the increasing range of aerial military operations through the 1930s making clear the threat from the German Luftwaffe to the whole of the British mainland. The military instinct for regularity worked in tension with the need to blend-in with the surrounding landscape; the systematic growth of RAF operations and its ever larger fleet and hangars had to be accommodated in structures of irregular layout, composed of unreflective surfaces, and dark or naturalistic colours. With this in mind, the chance to deploy temporary, lightweight, portable building forms and materials — such as prefabricated wooden huts — might evidently be a strategic advantage as well as an expedient compromise. (Halpenny, 1993) Large hangars, regular tile- or slate-roofed barrack buildings, roads and railways were all relatively reflective structures which could alert observers in the air to concentrated development; at Biggin Hill, it made sense to gather the large permanent structures near the roadside in West Camp, where they might be mistaken for civilian development. The hardstandings and E-shaped blast pens for fighter planes, and the smaller, irregular structures associated with dispersal were scattered around the aerodrome perimeter and in East Camp beside Cudham Woods.

Alan Baxter

West Camp in the 1930s

2.0 History

The extensive early 1930s fabric which remains even today at Biggin Hill Airport might seem to belie the late attention to Britain’s capacity for defence in the air during the rearmament process in that decade.

The RAF’s first permanent structures had been concentrated in the area later known as South Camp. Indeed, a 1929 Air Ministry Site Plan shows the full extent of West Camp occupied by buildings, between the Salt Box and the road to Cudham Lodge. The work of the 1930s phase of building was to make permanent many of these operational, technical and domestic structures, which were still to be concentrated in West Camp (partly for reasons of camouflage — see the box on Aerodrome layout and architecture in the early twentieth century on p. 6). The five barrack blocks were built in 1930, a first substantial Officers’ Mess (now Building 10, the Airmen’s Institute), Station HQ (now Building 33) and Sergeants’ Mess (now Building 12, the Candidates’ Club) all built by 1932. Neither South Camp nor East Camp is recorded on the pre-war plans located, so these might have been home only to hardstandings and temporary structures. Alternatively, they might not have been developed at all until final mobilisation, after 1938.

Biggin Hill’s early 1930s structures are testament to Trenchard’s consolidation of the RAF’s First World War legacy, and show that Biggin Hill’s strategic importance was accepted and upheld throughout the interwar period. Yet they pale in their scale compared with the last-minute mobilisation efforts for the Second World War: by the summer of 1939 the RAF’s building work alone cost more than three times the entire RAF budget in 1934. Few of these structures now remain at Biggin Hill; indeed, interwar RAF buildings survive generally in greater numbers than those of the 1940s. (RAF, Short History) This makes the wartime and immediate post-war structures that do survive all the more precious.

Alan Baxter

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

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Plan: RAF Archive, Hendon

2.0 History

An RAF Site Plan of Biggin Hill Aerodrome in 1924 showing semi-permanent RAF development in the area of the modern West Camp. The RFC’s earliest Station at South Camp is at least partly labelled War Department Anti-Aircraft Defence School.

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St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

Alan Baxter

2.0 History Plan: RAF Archive, Hendon

An RAF Site Plan dated 1929 again showing the extent of semi-permanent development at West Camp before the 1930s building works. As in the 1924 plan, the site of the present-day Chapel is occupied by an aeroplane shed

Alan Baxter

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

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2.0 History

Preparation for war

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In the mid-1930s, the RAF rolled-out the use of its highly secretive radio direction finding (RDF) technologies, based on the wireless techniques pioneered at Biggin Hill from 1917. The technology permitted the detection of approaching aircraft at a distance of 75 miles from coastal stations, and was a great step forward in the realisation of radar as perfected by the USA later in the War. Hitler’s move to annex the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia in 1938 focused minds on the increasing inevitability of war. The British military establishment’s warning of the potentially devastating impact of German bombing attacks on Britain gained new political weight, and prompted increased efforts to rapidly embed RAF Fighter Command capacity. At Biggin Hill, the permanent structures of the early 1930s were rapidly joined by new, prefabricated operational, technical and domestic accommodation, including the Married Quarters on Vincent Square. Biplane fighters were used right into the late 1930s, but new state-of-the-art Hurricane fighters arrived in 1938. The London clay underlying the aerodrome was judged to be too unreliable to support the new, heavier aeroplanes, so a 4,800ft tarmac runway — No. 1 — was constructed in late Autumn 1939.

On the eve of the Second World War, RAF Biggin Hill occupied a critical position for securing the skies over British. The Air Defence of Great Britain command structure had been replaced in 1936 with four strategic commands: Bomber, Fighter, Coastal and Training.

Mainland Britain was divided into four Fighter Command ‘Groups’ or zones; Group 11 covered the defensively crucial south-east of England and was responsible for the defence of London. Each group was divided into ‘Sectors’, each commanded by a Sector Station; Biggin Hill was the Sector Station for Sector C of Group 11, on a par with Sector Stations at RAF Kenley, RAF Northolt, RAF Hornchurch and RAF Tangmere. Biggin Hill’s Sector Control Room, with the radio call sign TOPHAT, commanded RAF Hawkinge between Folkestone and Dover in Kent, and RAF Friston near Beachey Head in East Sussex, as well as satellite airfields at West Malling and Gravesend.

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

Alan Baxter

2.3 Biggin Hill and the Battle of Britain After the Nazi invasion of Poland and the declaration of war in September 1939, a period of ‘Phoney War’ ensued, which gave Britain breathing space for rearmament. In May 1940, Hitler put his muchpostponed strategy for occupation of Western Europe into effect, with an advance through the Low Countries into northern France. At Biggin Hill, 32, 79, 213, 229, 242 Squadrons all operated in the early ground war over Northern Europe and provided cover for the evacuations at Dunkirk. Paris fell on 14 June 1940 and four days later in London, Winston Churchill, newly appointed Prime Minister, told the House of Commons: ‘the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin’.

Photo: © IWM (HU 54519A)

Plan: RAF Archive, Hendon

2.0 History

Hitler planned to invade Britain, but intended first to gain superiority over the RAF by crippling it from the air, in order to give his ground forces cover. That the Battle of Britain began and ended in the air was down to the extraordinary victory of the RAF over the larger Nazi air force. In 1940 the Luftwaffe had slightly fewer than 2,000 aircraft while the RAF had only 825 fighters including 520 Hurricanes and 258 Spitfires. Hitler’s assault on Britain began on 26 June with probing attacks on RAF and port infrastructure targets in south-east England, reaching further into Britain into August.

Two Hawker Hurricane Mk Is of No. 32 Squadron coming in to land for refuelling and rearming at Biggin Hill, watched by an airman standing with a signalling flag in the foreground, August 1940.

Alan Baxter

An RAF Site Plan of Biggin Hill dated 1945. The Plan shows the Aerodrome at its fullest extent as a flying station.

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

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The Strongest Link

2.0 History

At Biggin Hill, deep air raid shelters were built along with a 2,370ft concrete runway in early 1940. With the start of the Battle of Britain, 32, 141 and 610 Squadrons were deeply involved, though the aerodrome itself was as yet undamaged. The 90th AA Regiment protected the base while 74 men from the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment protected Biggin Hill from attack by paratroopers. On 19 July alone, 10 members of 141 Squadron were lost in action from Biggin Hill — the Station’s heaviest day of losses during the Battle.

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From late August 1940, the Luftwaffe were conducting large-scale daylight attacks against RAF airfields in south-east England, as well as night attacks. Group 11’s ‘Hardest Day’ was 18 August, which saw heavy attacks on nearby RAF Kenley, but effective defence of Biggin Hill during the first direct attacks it suffered left it little harmed. Later in the month, 32 and 610 Squadrons left the aerodrome, and 72 Squadron arrived at Biggin Hill with Spitfires.

On Friday 30 August, after morning raids which damaged a hangar and telephone lines, a raid by nine undetected Junker bombers at around 6 pm devastated the aerodrome. The transport yard was destroyed and the runway badly hit, storerooms, hangars, the armoury and both officers, and sergeants, messes were severely damaged, with gas and water mains ruptured. Approximately 40 personnel were killed in a direct hit on a shelter, and 35 more were injured in the raid. Further attacks followed on Saturday 31, when all telephone operations at Biggin Hill were destroyed and the operations block suffered a direct hit, with grave consequences since the aerodrome was the Sector Station. The operations office was displaced to a shop in the village, and then to Towerfields, a manor house from the old Stanhope estate.

In raids on Sunday 1 September the defence teleprinter network operated by the members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) took a direct hit. Three WAAF operators — Sergeants Elisabeth Mortimer and Helen Turner, and Corporal Elspeth Henderson — were awarded the Military Medal for their bravery in continuing to operate the defence lines during the raid.

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

The RAF was winning the air battle: Luftwaffe losses were in the order of two to every one British fighter lost. Moreover, mobilisation meant British fighter production was outstripping that of the Axis Powers. In September, the Luftwaffe turned its attention to London, beginning night-time Blitz raids that would last into May 1941. Since the Allied victory, historians have established that, by mid-September, the RAF’s defence of Britain had forced Hitler to indefinitely postpone ‘Operation Sealion’, his invasion of Britain. The Battle of Britain is said to have ended on 31 October, after which date the Luftwaffe shifted its essential objective from establishing supremacy over the RAF to waging Blitzkrieg against British civilian and infrastructure targets. A total of 51 aircrew had been lost from Biggin Hill. Its solid service as a Sector Station in the Outer London ring earned it the nickname ‘The Strongest Link’, which was later incorporated into the Station’s crest.

JCM Park & HM Stephen of 74 Squadron receiving the DFC on 27 August 1940, outside a dispersal hut at Biggin Hill, on the occasion of the shooting down of the 600th enemy aircraft.

‘An Operations Room’, painted by Elva Blacker, a WAAF sergeant and artist who served at Biggin Hill and recorded her experiences there.

Alan Baxter

Wartime Life at RAF Biggin Hill

RAF Biggin Hill and Group 11’s war was far from over, however.

Between 18 August 1940 and 7 January 1941, there were 12 direct attacks on Biggin Hill Aerodrome. The Blitz persisted into May 1941, before Hitler turned his attention to the Eastern Front. From 1942, Biggin Hill’s fighters provided cover for Bomber Command’s offensives over the Continent and engaged in other operations. In 1944, Balloon Command operated barrage balloons from Biggin Hill, and Transport Command took up residence to operate services to liberated parts of the Continent.

Typically only 20 per cent of the personnel resident at an RAF Station were flying aircrew. Many more were RAF and WAAF ground personnel operating radar and communications equipment, engineers maintaining the fleet and buildings, officers’ servants and caterers for the aircrew. The Married Quarters at Biggin Hill were evacuated at the outbreak of hostilities, as officers’ wives left the aerodrome and aircrew took up residence without their families.

intercept the incoming enemy from further away, instead of constant air patrolling.

Each fighter squadron commanded by an officer with the rank of Squadron Leader, was made up of two flights, A and B, each commanded by a Flight Lieutenant. Each Flight had three sections, Red, Green and Yellow, and each section had three aircraft, One, Two and Three. So while three squadrons were in service at Biggin Hill there might have been up to 54 fighter planes flying sorties.

Aircrew spent long shifts beginning at dawn at ‘dispersals’, to which they were driven from barracks in West Camp every morning. They passed the time, ate and drank in ‘readiness’, which might mean waiting in a dispersal hut, or simply in deckchairs or tents around the airfield — but always somewhere within sprinting distance of their fighter planes.

Sections rotated, relieving one another for breaks at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Instructions to ‘Scramble, Scramble’ were broadcast over the tannoy from the Operations Room. Pilots’ intercom carried information about the enemy. Once in flight, the objective was to draw away and pick off the German fighters in order to get to the bombers.

The sortie returned, a headcount established casualties, and the pilot filed a combat report . While daytime raids were the norm, duties would be stepped down at nightfall and pilots might find a chance to go to a pub in the village before retiring to barracks. (Halpenny 1984; RAF Museum)

Photo: © IWM

Image: BBC, Britain’s Greatest Generation - Their Finest Hour, June 2015

What made proximity so essential was precisely the system of radar which had been developed, in part at Biggin Hill, between the Wars. It enabled controllers to order scrambles to

Geoffrey Welham (92 Squadron), pilot of one of the St George’s Chapel Gate Guardian aircraft, in dispersals at Biggin Hill.

Alan Baxter

2.0 History

The later War

A dispersal hut at Hornchurch Aerodrome, May 1942.

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

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2.0 History

The first St George’s Memorial Chapel A chapel or station church would have existed at Biggin Hill Aerodrome from early in its history, but no such structure is marked on the 1929 site plan. The history of St George’s Chapel dates to June 1943, at the time of the destruction of the 1,000th German aircraft by fighters from the Biggin Hill sector. Station personnel wished for a memorial to the growing numbers killed on operations from within the Biggin Hill sector, to remember especially those who had died in the Battle of Britain. Three prefabricated huts, made with steel angleiron frames and lined with fibreboard, were acquired and placed together to form a single rectangular unit as a chapel, similar in size and layout to today’s chapel. The first St George’s Chapel stood in South Camp, on the business park site which today stands between Wireless Road and Churchill Way. It had taken the place of one of the hangars destroyed during the worst raids of 1940. On the nearest Sunday to Battle of Britain Day, 19 September 1943, a commemorative service was held, unveiling and dedicating the Memorial — the reredos of the present-day Chapel — and the Book of Remembrance.

The 1943 reredos with memorial inscriptions, against the east wall of the present St George’s Chapel.

The 1943 Book of Remembrance, with the page for 19 July — Biggin Hill’s day of heaviest losses during the Battle of Britain — on display in a darkwood case in the present St George’s Chapel. A poignant inscription notes that the page nearest to the date is displayed, but that ‘if, by the Grace of God, no page exists for that date, the book is set to the next page’.

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St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

Alan Baxter

Biggin Hill after the victory

Image: BHAL

2.0 History

Very shortly after victory in May 1945, RAF Biggin Hill was transferred completely from 11 Group Fighter Command to 46 Group Transport command. Thereafter it passed between Transport, Reserve and Fighter Command, and served as a training base, until the RAF finally ceased flying operations on 7 February 1959. Between 1959 and 1962, RAF Officer and Aircrew selection centres were established in West Camp, eventually headquartered in the large purpose-built E-shaped building constructed to the south of St George’s Chapel. The Officer and Aircrew Selection Centre (OASC) was the main such centre for the RAF and remained at Biggin Hill until 1992.

An aerial view of Biggin Hill Airport in c. 1950; St George’s Chapel has not yet been begun where the parade ground still exists, apparently occupied by aircraft.

Alan Baxter

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

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2.4 Post-war: Rebuilding St George’s Memorial Chapel

Photo: Wikipedia.org

2.0 History

In December 1946, a fire broke out in the Chapel, and the largely timber and board structure was almost totally razed. A successful appeal for mainly private donations during the late 1940s, with the backing of Churchill himself, made it possible to commission a design for a new chapel. Air Ministry Works Department (AMWD) records identified by English Heritage at the time of the Chapel’s listing identify its architects as A Beasley, W S Harper and G A Williams.

Histories of the Chapel and the memoirs of colleagues and family also record the involvement of an architect and designer who had served in the RAF: Flight Lieutenant Wemyss Wylton Todd (1906–1961) of 29 (sometime Biggin Hill) and 169 Squadron and Flying Officer Kazimierz (‘Kazik’) Zakrzewski-Rucinski (1909–1982) of the Free Polish Air Force and later 300 (Polish) Squadron RAF (see box on p. 24 for biographical details). The division of labour between the AMWD architects, Todd and Zakrzewski-Rucinski has not been established, but it can be conjectured that a popular campaign of several years, originating from the Station, and eventually realised by the RAF, would have involved several phases of speculative designs and revisions as funds were raised and designs and specifications eventually finalised.

The Great Escape Todd and Zakrzewski-Rucinski’s collaboration at Biggin Hill had a special poignancy, since their first architectural work together had been while both were interned at Stalag Luft III, the prisoner of war camp in Lower Silesia, famous for the Great Escape. After 50 of the captured escapees were executed and their remains returned to the camp, the prisoners persuaded their intendents to permit them to create a memorial. They were permitted to gather rubble on excursions from the camp, and seek out spare tools and materials for the work. Hundreds of prisoners contributed, but Todd was appointed by the chaplains to design the work from among the several interned architects and craftsmen; Zakrzewski-Rucinski crafted an RAF eagle from aluminium cooking utensils and bribe-won gold lacquer. The memorial was desecrated by Soviet troops in 1945, but still stands in its original location.

Building the new Chapel The design for St George’s Chapel was based on the original Chapel, as is evident in the watercolour of the first Chapel which hangs in the vestibule of its present-day successor. Its exterior treatment, though,

was quite original and strikingly elegant, showing real attention to the designs of contemporary peers; English Heritage’s description at the time it added the Chapel to the National Heritage List at Grade II compared it to a Lombardic Early Christian Church. The design was praised during construction for recapturing the austerity, simplicity and atmosphere, as well as the size and shape of the wartime huts.

Replicating the prefab-hut Chapel’s regular volume, the new Chapel used a wide unaisled nave, without articulation where it becomes the sanctuary, and with a slightly narrower narthex, St George’s Room to the west. Small flat-roofed vestries stood near the west end to the south and north. Linking the south vestry and the nave, a lobby stood at the foot of a tall rectangular bell tower. These simple, regular volumes replicated the older chapel, and — as in the separable narthex space — made for a practical building that could continue to accommodate other uses, such as that recorded by a 1945 Site Plan for RAF Biggin Hill, where St George’s Chapel is also marked as a lecture room. The Chapel’s arrangement also allowed for a clean-lined exterior.

The Chapel’s symmetrical and restrained external appearance was kept neat by the straight lines of clay Roman tile roof laid on steel

An unattributed watercolour of the east end of the 1943 St George’s Chapel at RAF Biggin Hill; the underside of the pitched roof is evident.

Todd and the prisoners’ memorial to ‘the Fifty’ at Stalag Luft III.

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St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

Alan Baxter

The architects gave the nave and sanctuary six bays, each with rectangular windows destined to receive memorial stained-glass compositions by the glass artist Hugh Easton (1906–1965, see box on p. 24 for biographical details), who had in 1947 created the Battle of Britain Memorial Window in Westminster Abbey. The badges and seraphim he used in that composition were progenitors to the striking designs he created for St George’s Chapel, in each of which the winged spirit of a young pilot bears the stylised emblem of a Squadron of the Station.

The Chapel’s interior fittings were well-finished and simple, variously modern or traditional, in dark hardwoods to complement the saved 1943 reredos. Otherwise, materials and designs were more modern and unusual, as in the interesting font in stainless steel composed of a shallow basin on a Y-shaped base, which seems to recall the forms of aircraft or missiles. A change to the interior depicted in the watercolour of the earlier chapel is the insertion of a ceiling, of narrow fibreboard panels spanning between crosspieces, gently cambers across the nave and carries elegant original ceiling lights of emphatically mid-century style. In contrast, the reredos is set on a wooden platform, behind the simple wooden rail, setting apart a simple sanctuary which struck a more traditional tone. Somewhere between these styles, the notable parquet floor is said to be composed of blocks made out of the laminated propeller blades of decommissioned planes. With all of these original features still extant, it is possible to say that the design achieved a spacious but comforting atmosphere in the nave, its eclectic furnishings striking a characterful balance between the modern and the traditional.

The west end of the Chapel, with the narthex (St George’s Room) to the fore, and the bell tower.

2.0 History

trusses, but softened by the light red brickwork in Flemish bond. It had kneelers, consistent sills and a continuous brick offset plinth. The architects added subtle brickwork detailing, such as the tympanum in herringbone brick to the half-brick arch with casement window.

Viewed from the west end, the lower, narrower gable of the narthex echoes the larger span across the nave. The off-centre tower, with the clock to its west face added later in the 1950s, echoes the brick chimney of the 1930s-40s Station boiler-house building to its east.

The west elevation of the 1980s extension, which was built in matching style and materials.

Alan Baxter

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

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2.0 History

Hugh Easton’s memorial windows, in sequence from south-west, to north-west. Each badge commemorating a Squadron that served at RAF Biggin Hill.

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St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

Alan Baxter

2.0 History

Alan Baxter

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

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2.0 History 20

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

Alan Baxter

In the mid-century RAF, taste (as it had between the Wars) tended towards the architecturally conservative and reassuring. In fact, this was not far removed from wider church-building tastes in England around the mid-point of the century. Rebuilding of damaged churches and the construction of new churches was given impetus by the Church Commissioners, formed by a merger in 1948. The new work frequently incorporated ever-more up-to-date materials and construction techniques. However, cladding, detailing and decoration, the popular idioms of the early century — Arts and Crafts, neo-Gothic or neoGeorgian — continued to prevail, albeit gradually paved down under the influence of Modernism.

Image: LB Bromley

A new round of post-war memorialisation was also underway, influenced by the same idioms. Sir Edward Maufe (1882–1974) was perhaps the leading figure in these trends: his modern neoGothic design for Guildford Cathedral in the late 1920s — still under

St George’s Chapel under construction in summer 1951.

construction in the 1940s — was widely revered, and in 1951 he began work on the Air Forces Memorial at Runnymede. Though the latter work was a stone-clad piece of monumental neo-Classicism, its use of rounded arches, arcading and narrow windows made reference to medieval ecclesiastical architecture. It also demonstrates Maufe’s deep affection for contemporary Scandinavian religious architecture, which he regarded as having found an eloquent modern language of austere simplicity for buildings in very traditional forms. If not all these influences were at the forefront of Todd’s mind in designing the new Chapel at Biggin Hill, his treatment of its exterior in particular was a fine reflection of the balanced, eclectic idiom of the time, most expertly applied by Maufe.

Important church-building was also planned at a nearby site. In 1951, Reverend Vivian Symons became Perpetual Curate of Biggin Hill, a parish whose church had, since 1904, been the temporary corrugated-iron church of St Mark. Symons later recalled that his first arrival in Biggin Hill took him past the large, unusually lightbrick Memorial Chapel still under construction. He launched into the project of constructing a permanent church for the village, identifying the abandoned neo-Gothic All Saints, North Peckham as a source of the necessary materials. In just over three years, he deconstructed the older church and recycled its bricks, stones and timbers to build St Mark’s at Biggin Hill, apparently scarcely relying on the hands of others. Like St George’s Chapel, St Mark’s applied modern detailing to traditional forms, with simple, sometimes textured brick elevations, a solid rectangular bell tower, clean rooflines and a steeply pitched roof.

During the building of the ‘Moving Church’, Symons served as the first Chaplain of St George’s Memorial Chapel. (Lewis, acc. 2015)

2.0 History

Context of the new Chapel’s design

The Chapel’s new site had been the Station’s parade ground at the end of the War. The Chapel’s foundation stone was laid by Air Chief Marshall Hugh, by then Lord, Dowding, on 25 July 1951, as recorded by the stone set beneath the window in the west wall. Building was complete by November for dedication by the Bishop of Rochester.

Photos: Wikicommons

Sir Edward Maufe’s Guildford Cathedral.

The inscribed foundation stone.

Alan Baxter

The Air Forces Memorial at Runnymede, also by Maufe.

St Mark’s, Biggin Hill – ‘TheMoving Church’.

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

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2.5 A Permanent Shrine London Biggin Hill Airport

Landscaping and the Gate Guardians

before the construction of the OASC.

Photo: Bromley Local Studies Library

The new Chapel had been built on the parade ground of the Station, and the photograph recording its construction (see p. 21) appears to show rubble and ruins around. The landscaping for the new chapel was completed after its construction, and is best recorded by a photograph in Bromley Local Studies Library dating to about 1953, and another in the Imperial War Museum archive from the late 1950s or early 1960s. The photographs reveal that the Chapel originally stood unenclosed, integrated with the neat, perhaps gravelled paths around the nearby Station buildings. Low box hedges edge the low terrace along the west front of the chapel, and young trees stand around the lawns. The first photograph suggests the three trees to the east of the chapel beside the airfield, and the rows of trees today immediately north of the north vestry extension, were planted at the time of the Chapel’s construction. A row of young firs also stood to the north; these may be the same which survive today. At the time of the photograph, the present-day Garden of Remembrance to the south had yet to be established. The Chapel’s setting was formal but simple and had a great sense of openness — especially of connection to the wide skies of the airfield visible beyond to the east, greatest of all

During the late 1950s, Croydon Airport, London’s original civilian airport, had been closing down, which led to a growth in non-military flights from Biggin Hill. After almost a decade of negotiations with Whitehall, in 1972, Bromley Borough Council agreed to purchase Biggin Hill Aerodrome from the RAF, taking formal control in 1974.

The Chapel and Gate Guardians freshly arranged, c.1953.

In 1992, the Department for Transport required local authorities controlling airports of a certain size to create an independent operating company, and in 1994 a 125-year lease was finally agreed between LB Bromley and BHAL, a subsidiary of Regional Airports Ltd., which operates London Biggin Hill Airport to this day. Following a 2001 action in the Court of Appeal, BHAL is restricted to operating non-ticketed flights, but operates thousands of private training, business and corporate flights each year.

The Chapel at the civil airport From 1958, after the RAF ceased using Biggin Hill for anything but officer and aircrew selection, ownership and management of the civil airport was organised by the Government’s military structures — from 1964, by the new Ministry of Defence — until the former Station’s sale to Bromley in 1974. The sale left the RAF in control of parts of the station it still used for selection, and formally in control of St George’s Chapel and its precinct. As the Borough began to sell parts of West and South Camps for business use it became necessary to divide the Chapel and its precinct from the surrounding structures. Today this separation is achieved by tall mesh fencing, which has been partially disguised by planting.

Photo: IWM

2.0 History

A Hurricane and a Spitfire were flown to Biggin Hill in 1953 to become ‘Gate Guardians’, mounted on poles on either side of the entrance from the Westerham Road. At their installation, each plane was surrounded by a rose bed planted with ‘Peace’ roses. The aircraft were eventually replaced by the Ministry of Defence with fibreglass replicas, but these were in turn replaced in 2010 when the Friends of the Chapel reinstated real aircraft. The Hurricane and Spitfire which guard the gates today were flown from Biggin Hill during the War: the Spitfire, K9998 Q-JK, was flown by Plt. Off. Geoffrey Welham of 92 Squadron during the Battle of Britain.

The Chapel and Gate Guardians in a planted landscape, c.1960.

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St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

Alan Baxter

The Chapel itself continued to be treasured by local residents and veterans from farther afield, above all for memorialisation of The Few — precisely the permanent shrine that Churchill and others had envisaged in the late 1940s. Around the south vestry, a Garden of Remembrance was laid out for the burial of ashes of RAF personnel and their close relatives, and for the placement of private memorials.

A bed of roses lies beside the Chapel, and the covered walkway which formerly connected to the adjacent OASC building was adapted by the addition of benches and trellises to become a place for contemplation.

The Garden of Remembrance, with repurposed walkway.

Alan Baxter

Chapel alterations In the 1980s, the Chapel was extended at the linking corridor to the original north vestry by the addition of a small chapel and additional vestry rooms. This growth reflected the great use still made of the Chapel — for services, weddings, funerals and other occasions, especially in connection with veterans of the Battle of Britain, many by then in their 70s. The extension was built in a style matching that of the main chapel, in light brown brick, with a continuous plinth, matching kneelers, and straight eaves to the tiled, gabled roof. Its west elevation was given a subtly more complex treatment which stressed a possible Lombardic inspiration, with the addition of projecting panels to either side suggesting pilasters and capitals, and receding courses beneath the gable, over an oculus above the west door. The west door itself matched that of the main chapel, with a rounded arch and three plain receding orders.

2.0 History

To the north of the Chapel, two single-storey brick buildings stand at right angles, linked by a covered walkway. Site plans and designation reports record that these were a parachute store and pilots’ locker room, the latter also referred to as ‘MG Works’ in the Conservation Area documentation. The parachute store was later used as a Roman Catholic Chapel. After the closure of the RAF Station, Catholic services were rehoused in St George’s Chapel, and the two linked buildings to the north have been used by the local Air Cadets branch.

Some changes were made inside the Chapel too. The long-established stained glass firm Goddard & Gibbs decorated St George’s Room with new windows: the west window in St George’s Room space, showing St George and the Dragon, was installed to commemorate a 40th Anniversary ceremony which took place on 21 September 1980; four other windows were installed in 1985 to replace the casements in each of the bays of the same narthex structure, each commemorating the roles played by ground support.

Biggin Hill Airport’s ‘Dispersal Hut’ in its location from the 1970s to 2015.

St George and the Dragon, by Goddard & Gibbs, 1980.

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

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Flying Officer Kazimierz Zakrzewski-Rucinski

Hugh Easton

Wylton Todd (1906–1961) was born in Adelaide, Australia, where he trained in architecture, arriving in London via a spell in New York. His projects in London may have included work on James Lomax-Simpson’s Unilever House (1933) and Herbert Baker’s 1939 rebuilding of the Bank of England. He enjoyed great success in architecture, being honoured at Edward VIII’s last levée ceremony.

Though in his late 30s when War Wemyss Wylton Todd in broke out, rather than leave for uniform.

Canada with his family, he lied about his age to join the RAF, and flew with 29 and 169 Squadron, in part from Biggin Hill. His Mosquito was shot down in 1944 and he was captured and imprisoned in Stalag Luft III in Silesia, where his talents in performance saw him deeply involved in dramatic and musical productions. He is credited with a central role in crafting the memorial to the 50 executed following the Great Escape. His practice after the War in London enabled him to return to the theatre to collaborate with Cecil Beaton on a 1950 refurbishment of the Duke of York’s Theatre, St Martin’s Lane. He worked on other projects in Britain, India, Mexico and the Bahamas.

Kazik Zakrzewski-Rucinski (1909–1982) was born in Poland and trained in art in Warsaw. He worked as an illustrator but fled the occupation in 1939, reportedly travelling into Syria via Greece and Turkey, crossing North Africa and reaching Gibraltar to join the RAF. Flying with 300 (Polish) Squadron, he was shot down in August 1942. Interned at Stalag Luft III, he produced moving watercolour portraits of his fellow POWs. After the war, in addition to Kazik’s contribution at Biggin Hill, he worked as an architectural draughtsman drawing perspectives, for T P Bennett and Son, among others.

Hugh Easton (1906–1965) was born in London, UK. He established a stained-glass studio in Cambridge, moving to London after the Second World War. He enjoyed particular success in the immediate post-war period, producing around 250 memorial windows, including, in 1947, the great Battle of Britain Memorial Window at Westminster Abbey, commemorating The Few with Shakespeare’s words from Henry V, ‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers’.

He made other windows across Britain in this period, including those at St George’s Chapel, Biggin Hill, and another fighterthemed window at the Rolls Royce factory in Derby.

Photo: wwiimemories.co.uk

Photograph: Peter Hynes

2.0 History

Flight Lieutenant Wemyss Wylton Todd

Photo: Wikicommons

Portraits of FLt (C) Bob McBride & FLt (RAF) Peter Gardner by Kazik Zakrzewski-Rucinski.

Hugh Easton’s Battle of Britain Memorial Window in Westminster Abbey (1947).

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St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

Alan Baxter

Goddard & Gibbs

2.0 History

Goddard & Gibbs is a decorative glass studio initially established as Walter Gibbs & Sons on Blackfriars Road in London. In 1938 the studio acquired Goddards Glass Works. The firm was subsequently taken over, but retained the Goddard & Gibs name and ‘GG’ insignia, under its chief designer John Lawson (1932–2009).

A detail from one of Hugh Easton’s windows, in the location where others carry private inscriptions.

Alan Baxter

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

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3.0 Significance 3.1 Assessing significance

3.0 Significance

Assessing significance is the means by which the cultural importance of a place and its component parts is identified and compared, both absolutely and relatively. The purpose of this is not merely academic, it is essential to effective conservation and management because the identification of elements of high and lower significance, based on a thorough understanding of a site, enables owners and designers to develop proposals that safeguard, respect and where possible enhance the character and cultural values of the site. The assessment identifies areas where no change, or only minimal changes should be considered, as well as those where more intrusive changes might be acceptable and could enrich understanding and appreciation of significance.

Statutory designation is the legal mechanism by which significant historic places are identified in order to protect them. St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill was listed at Grade II in 2005. However, it is necessary to go beyond this in order to arrive at a more detailed and broader understanding of significance that considers more than matters archaeological and architectural-historical. This is achieved here by using the terminology and criteria from the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF; adopted March 2012). This document places the concept of significance at the heart of the planning process.

Annex 2 of the NPPF defines significance as: The value of a heritage asset to this and future generations because of its heritage interest. That interest may be archaeological, architectural, artistic or historic. Significance derives not only from a heritage asset’s physical presence, but also from its setting.

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St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

In Conservation Principles, Policies and Guidance (2008) Historic England (HE; formerly English Heritage) set out a methodology for assessing significance by considering ‘heritage values’. The HE values — evidential, historical, aesthetic — are broadly aligned with the NPPF types of significance, and they include also communal value, ‘the meanings of a place for the people who relate to it’. In this report the NPPF terms are used because their adoption simplifies the preparation of planning and listed building consent applications, but we also take into account the communal value identified in Conservation Principles.

Annex 2 of NPPF defines archaeological interest [‘evidential value’] in the following way: There will be archaeological interest in a heritage asset if it holds, or potentially may hold, evidence of past human activity worthy of expert investigation at some point. Heritage assets with archaeological interest are the primary source of evidence about the substance and evolution of places, and of the people and cultures that made them.

The Department for Communities and Local Government has previously (in PPS5) given these definitions for the other types of interest: Architectural and Artistic Interest [‘aesthetic value’]: These are the interests in the design and general aesthetics of a place. They can arise from conscious design or fortuitously from the way the heritage asset has evolved. More specifically, architectural interest is an interest in the art or science of the design, construction, craftsmanship and decoration of buildings and structures of all types. Artistic interest is an interest in other human creative skill, like sculpture.

Historic Interest [‘historical value’]: An interest in past lives and events (including pre-historic). Heritage assets can illustrate or be associated with them. Heritage assets with historic interest not only provide a material record of our nation’s history, but can also provide an emotional meaning for communities derived from their collective experience of a place and can symbolise wider values such as faith and cultural identity [‘communal value’].

HE has sought to clarify the distinction between archaeological interest and historic interest that NPPF intends. Para 16 of HE’s Historic Environment Good Practice Advice In Planning Note 2: Managing Significance in Decision-Taking (published 27 March 2015) begins: Archaeological interest, as defined in the NPPF, differs from historic interest . . . because it is the prospects for a future expert archaeological investigation to reveal more about our past that need protecting.

The assessment of significance is usually an amalgam of these different interests, and the balance between them will vary from one case to the next. What is important is to demonstrate that all these interests have been considered. This is achieved by assessing the significance of the whole site relative to comparable places, and the relative significance of its component parts.

This assessment of significance begins with a review of designations at Biggin Hill in section 3.2. A summary statement of the significance of St George’s Memorial Chapel follows in section 3.3, elaborated with reference to the thematic definitions of heritage interest described above. Section 3.4 describes how the significance of the Chapel and its precinct varies by area, before section 3.5 expands this to consider views and the significance of the Chapel’s relationship with its neighbours.

Alan Baxter

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The Chapel is a Grade-II listed building — a ‘designated heritage asset’. The rationale for its listing is not recorded in the list description, but this does give a detailed description and concise history of the building (see Appendix 2). The Chapel is one of six listed buildings in the former RAF Station’s West Camp, with two listed groups of barrack blocks and married quarters, all indicated in the plans included here.

These listings were mostly the result of a thematic survey of airfield structures by English Heritage.

8

7

English Heritage (and now Historic England) has historically considered buildings for listing as part of thematic typologies; in these terms St George’s Memorial Chapel is a hybrid building. A suite of Designation Listing Selection Guides published in 2011 treated Military Structures and Places of Worship in separate volumes. Both of these categorisations have been considered in the assessment of significance which follows.

LB Bromley designated a Biggin Hill Conservation Area that encompasses all of the listed buildings, but also protects the undesignated buildings between them around West Camp as part of an area of particularly valuable character or appearance. A special property of conservation area designation is that all trees receive special protection, being subject to particular rules about local authority oversight of work done to them.

6

5 9

10 12

11 14 3

15 1

2

Alan Baxter

4

13

Grade II listed

1

St George’s Memorial Chapel (1951)

2

Building 33 (1931) (Former Station HQ)

3

Former Officers’ Mess (c. 1935)

4

Building 12 (1932) Candidate’s Club (Former Sergeants’ Mess)

5

Building 15 (1934) (Hawkinge Block)

6

Building 10 (1930) Airmen’s Institute (Former Officers’ Mess)

7

Buildings 1-5 (1930) (Airmens’ Barrack Blocks)

8

Vincent Square Married Quarters (26 surviving 1929)

9

Armory Annexe (rejected for listing)

10

Armory (rejected for listing)

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Inflammable materials store

12

Fuel sheds (rejected for listing)

13

Pilots’ locker room (rejected for listing)

14

Parachute store (rejected for listing)

15

Former Roman Catholic chapel

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Passenger Terminal (incl. 1950s control tower, rejected for listing)

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

3.0 Significance

3.2 Designations

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3.0 Significance

3.3 Summary and thematic significance St George’s Memorial Chapel is designated as a listed building because of its special historic and architectural interest.

Architecturally, its restrained design is a clean and modern use of traditional church forms, which incorporates clever reference to local antecedents and to the materials and aesthetics of its aerodrome surroundings. Its architectural interest extends to its setting within a precinct, and beyond that its relation to the surrounding RAF Station.

This context is also the foundation of its huge historic interest; the Chapel was established by public donations to be a lasting national memorial to those lost in the aerial defence of Britain during the Second World War. Its creation was supported by Sir Winston Churchill. Itslocation celebrates the particular role and history of RAF Biggin Hill as a site of military aviation. As a place of commemoration and worship the Chapel’s social and communal value is in evidence in its daily use. It is its unique historic interest which makes the Chapel particularly special.

huts which had constituted its destroyed predecessor and evoke typical airfield building forms such as hangars. Its altar sits against an unarticulated east wall, the nave and chancel technically part of the same space as befitted the contemporary mood, but actually both raised on a simple but traditional sanctuary platform, exalting the 1943 memorial reredos.

Even if its simplicity is typical of RAF Chapels, this characteristic was exploited by its architects for stylistic effect, allowing it to reflect in its own way the post-war reformist mood in church building by evoking ancient plainness in its calm symmetry and austerity reminiscent of a

Lombardic Early-Christian church. Simplicity and calm are essential to the Chapel’s effect as a place of contemplation and commemoration.

The powerful effect of such modernist sensibilities applied to historic forms was a core conviction of Sir Edward Maufe’s leading work in church building in the same period. Maufe used austere simplicity to create religious atmosphere, and was in this way at least an influence on the St George’s Chapel. His Air Forces Memorial was an important context for the Chapel, but his St Nicholas, Saltdean is a closer parallel, where the simple and adaptable form required to accommodate parochial events in the same small space as worship is provided in a modest but elegant piece of architecture.

Architectural and Artistic Interest St George’s Memorial Chapel has high architectural interest, in summary for its elegant balance of traditional forms with contemporary sensibility, and calm symmetry with a palette of materials and decoration which richly evokes its particular context.

Being attributable to the work of several architects, the Chapel does not derive special architectural interest from the other works of its creators, except in so far as the creative role of AMWD architects mean it marks a step forward in the gradual development of fairly conservative RAF tastes in architecture generally, and the involvement of Wemyss Wylton Todd and Kazik Zakrzewski-Rucinski connects it to a specially interesting strand in the story of Second World War memorialisation.

Interior of the Chapel, looking east

The most architecturally interesting post-war church building reflects contemporary debates in ecclesiology and social perspectives on worship. Buildings like Coventry Cathedral could be radical reimaginings of church forms for modernity, while others such as Liverpool RC Cathedral physically embodied attempts to move the eucharist into the centre of the congregation. St George’s Chapel at Biggin Hill was not really intentionally innovative in form, although it was unusual in trying to replicate the shape set by the prefabricated St Nicholas, Saltdean (Sir Edward Maufe, 1964)

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St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

Alan Baxter

The Chapel’s artistic interest is high for such a small building. The exceptional collection of stained glass — above all the beautiful sequence of memorial windows by Hugh Easton, but also those in St George’s Room celebrating the service ground personnel — is a traditional form applied with great success to a modern building and the particular historic and religious context of a Battle of Britain memorial chapel. Other beautiful items in the Chapel’s collection were designed for the building in remarkable materials, or in many cases are donations or bequests given in memory of individuals or units, these appearing often to be fittings brought from churches or chapels elsewhere. The fine carved eagle lectern, for instance, was a gift from the Belgian Air Force and was not designed for the Chapel.

The pews seem also to have arrived from another place of worship.

A multitude of other items — commemorative plaques, the Book of Remembrance, the knitted pew cushions, paintings and photographs, and more — have artistic interest of their own. In some cases, their provenance or dedications give them historic interest, described further below. Where they were designed for the Chapel these pieces have special artistic interest, which compounds the architectural interest of the space; the architects of other twentieth-century churches frequently designed or commissioned contemporary art and craft specifically for their buildings. But all the pieces of the collection together, regardless of provenance, are part of the Chapel’s total architectural and artistic interest, as a space with a certain form and function, designed to be furnished with reference to both tradition and its specific context.

Alan Baxter

3.0 Significance

The architectural interest of St George’s Chapel is compounded by its material palette, chosen with attention to internal texture, deliberately mixing natural and synthetic materials. The Chapel’s inception and its architects and designers bring it historic interest through association with stories of war, and this historic interest is compounded by their choices of materials; architecture and history inform and celebrate one another. The parquet floor composed of laminated timber strips cut from propeller blades; the striking missile-like font; the rude and not at all churchlike materials of fibreboard panels and metal strips which, with elegant lamps, create an attractive ceiling evocative of aviation.

The choice of humble and salvaged materials may also have been due to rationing; restrictions on the supply and use of building materials, so desperately needed for house construction, continued until 1954.

In these circumstances, the determination of the Chapel’s makers to provide a robust and dignified building, is all the more impressive.

These design choices are part of the Chapel’s architectural interest and underline its historic interest too.

Details of interior fittings and furnishings

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

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Historic interest The Chapel’s historic interest is much greater than it would be for a typical new place of worship of the 1950s. The Chapel’s historic interest has two main strands: first, its place in the development of RAF Biggin Hill and through it in the history of the RAF and military aviation and in particular the Battle of Britain; and second, the intention of its various and eminent founders that it should be a memorial to the Battle of Britain and those who fought it.

3.0 Significance

As with any historic building, the details of the construction, materials and development of St George’s Chapel in its context can tell us about the times in which it existed. This Chapel is linked specifically with the changing fortunes of Britain’s military air capacity, and with attitudes to commemoration and worship during the twentieth century, as described in section 2 of this report. The first strand of the Chapel’s

The Chapel excels in historic interest, however, in interpreting the story of the Battle of Britain. A visit tells this history in a way that transcends exhibited documents and photographs alone; the weight of loss and scale of service the Chapel expresses is its essential quality.

Objects such as the scramble bell are speak eloquently of its historic interest. The Chapel has a leading role in Britain’s commemoration of its decisive air battle and of the Second World War as a whole.

Social interest and communal value Informally the Chapel has long functioned as a visitor’s centre for those interested in the history of RAF Biggin Hill. This role has accreted great social interest over the decades of its existence: many new RAF recruits visiting the neighbouring OASC must have paid tribute at the Chapel. The Chapel’s social interest is strongly associated with its commemorative function. Personal dedications such as those in each of Easton’s memorial windows are collectively a weighty source

The Biggin Hill scramble bell.

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historic interest also gains from the Chapel’s association with all the great figures of Biggin Hill’s past, as well as the service and sacrifice of those not individually commemorated. This associative historic interest is redoubled in the Chapel’s case because of the particular interest figures as historically significant as Sir Winston Churchill showed in its cause. Todd, Zakrzewski-Rucinski and the Great Escape are another rich associative strand.

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

The interior of St George’s Room, with RAF memorabilia on the walls.

of communal value, further explored below. The Chapel serves a social purpose too for those much more remote from its building by standing as a focal point for their commemoration at a renowned historic site. Many acts of commemoration are noted on objects within the Chapel, and in its precinct. For instance, a stone set in the Garden of Remembrance marks the gratitude of the Dutch Air Force.

Considering the Chapel’s communal value suggests another slightly different strand in its significance, as the living focal point of several communities – notably the worshippers who attend regular services at the Chapel, ministered by its Chaplain, the Vicar of Biggin Hill, and by its Roman Catholic pastor. Many more visitors attend to remember loved ones whose ashes are interred at the Chapel or to mark ceremonies of personal significance which took place there.

St George’s Chapel does not have a ‘parish’ in the normal sense but wider community of Friends helps to care for the Chapel, supporting the work of the Chapel’s Custodian. Their involvement aims to ensure it remains as a ‘living memorial’ as well as a ‘permanent shrine’. A still move widespread community of groups with an interest in RAF Biggin Hill and its history, and with the Battle of Britain wherever it was fought, will have special regard for the Chapel, even if their association is remote, or not formally recorded. Several groups including the Biggin Hill Battle of Britain Supporters’ Club and the Biggin Hill Airport Social Club revolve around the history and life of the airfield, and so they too have a special regard for the Chapel.

Hand-stitched hassock covers of uniform design on a background of Air Force blue.

Alan Baxter

Archaeological interest

3.5 Significant views and relationships

The whole site of the historic aerodrome has potential for archaeology of great interest. Mainly this relates to its history as an aerodrome, above all in times of conflict when many past structures were abruptly lost without record. In certain places, structures of older provenance such as Cudham Lodge may have left archaeology too, but these locations are generally distant from either the dispersal hut in East Camp or the Chapel precinct in West Camp. Both sorts of archaeological interest may merit future investigation – the former potentially having particular interest in relation to the Chapel.

However, the Chapel and precinct as presently constituted and understood, do not have archaeological interest which contribute to significance.

St George’s Memorial Chapel was built within and as an addition to a working RAF base, and its architecture and setting cannot be fully understood without this context.

its celebration of their achievement. It is interesting to compare this view today with the photograph of the Chapel from the same perspective, taken in about 1960, which shows how the landscape has subtly matured and developed, but the Chapel’s setting is in essence preserved. This view from the west is significant.

Certain views of the Chapel — and views from the vicinity of the Chapel — are important to the appreciation of its heritage significance, and these have changed during the Chapel’s lifetime. The Chapel’s close neighbours have not much changed in 60 years, but they do not all relate to it with equal worth for its heritage significance.

The significance plan on p. 33 graphically expresses the significance of the Chapel building and its key views and neighbour relationships.

In contrast, the view onto the Chapel’s rear (east) elevation is less significant. This elevation of the Chapel was designed with even less decorative architectural detail or articulation than its west side. It is viewed from functional areas of the former West Camp which lie to its north and east. It is screened from the airfield by the blockwork screen of uncertain date which was probably erected to screen the Chapel and Memorial Garden a little from the noise and exposure of the working airfield. This view from the east has some significance, nonetheless, being a little-altered perspective on the Chapel’s original fabric.

Significance of views

3.0 Significance

The Chapel’s significance is essentially inseparable from the experience of the whole building and its precinct as a designed shrine on a historic site. No element could be lost without taking from the significance of the whole. That said, certain of the building’s elements have always played a greater role in preserving and presenting its various forms of significance: above all this applies to the nave and St George’s Room. They are highly significant because of their centrality, literally, in the Chapel’s arrangement, and figuratively in its commemorative, interpretative and religious functions, as well as because of the care and interest of their design. In this latter regard, the bell tower too is a highly significant part of the architectural composition. The more functional spaces of the two vestries and the north extension, which does not currently serve as an additional chapel space, are of lower design status and are less central to what is special about the building. Nonetheless they are significant, since they are truly indispensable to the function of the building as a whole and essential to the architectural composition. The extension was a carefully-considered and well-executed evolution of the building.

In much the same way, the Chapel’s precinct contributes to the significance of the site both in its function — providing a dignified approach to the Chapel and a Garden of Remembrance for quiet contemplation — and the contribution it makes to the experience of worshipers and other visitors.

The Chapel was designed as a symmetrical composition, and though the addition of the northern extension in the 1980s has changed this original balance, planting around the Chapel and the careful consideration of the scale and form of the extension mean that the view onto the Chapel’s west elevation is still the most important one for appreciating its architectural significance. It is framed meaningfully and evocatively by the Gate Guardians and the ornamental gates and railings in Air Force blue with their RAF-insignia design. This view onto the main road is the Chapel’s public face and reveals its creators’ intention that it should serve as a place where the RAF’s institutional commemoration of The Few opens to share with civilian Britain in

Photo: IWM

3.4 Significance by area

The Chapel and Gate Guardians viewed from the west today and in c.1960.

Alan Baxter

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

31

3.0 Significance

The only significant view from the Chapel’s precinct is that onto the airfield — a glimpsed view to the south-east through trees and hangars. Inconveniently, this view is available only from an area of the enclosure largely screened from architecturally- and historicallyinteresting elements of the Chapel, a situation that is acknowledged by the perforations in the blockwork wall to the Chapel’s east, which seems ambiguously to screen the Chapel’s contemplative spaces from exposure while also trying to maintain a visual connection to the wider airport. The view is significant because the sounds, breezes and views of aircraft it affords can evocatively enhance the experience of

Significance of relationships The Chapel relates in heritage significance to its neighbouring buildings in visual terms, but also in historic and functional ways. The brown-brick boiler-house building and chimney to the Chapel’s east was built in the 1930s or 1940s, and was labelled on the 1945 site plan as the ‘central heating station’. Though a functional building of little special interest, early views of the completed Chapel strongly suggest that the visual context of this building and its modest but interestingly modern chimney was a consideration in the design of the Chapel and the situation of its bell tower. Furthermore, the existence of such an obviously functional building close to the Chapel, emphasised by the visual echo of the two towers, serves to stress the historic significance of the Chapel’s situation on a working fighter base. They have a significant relationship.

To the north of the Chapel stands the Station’s former Roman Catholic chapel, a single-storey brick building with pitched roof linked to another that stands at right-angles to it. It is now used by a local Air Cadet branch, since Catholic services are now accommodated in St George’s Chapel. As a former place of worship and as another public facility at the former Station, linking the community to its history

Views onto the rear elevation of the Chapel from its east.

32

visiting the Chapel, and meaningfully remind Chapel visitors of the building’s working context. Other views onto the building’s side and rear elevations, have no significance.

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

The view to the airfield from the east of the Chapel precinct.

through the activities of the Air Cadets, the building has communal value and historic significance which significantly complements that of the main Chapel.

The significance relationship between the Chapel and the former RC chapel is somewhat compromised by the existence of the car park between them and the way they are crudely separated by utilitarian fencing. The historic role of the building as an RC chapel deserves some interpretation wherever the history of worship and commemoration at Biggin Hill is described.

To the south of St George’s Chapel stands the Officer and Aircrew Selection Centre building, a large E-shaped modernist office block in brick, purpose-built by the RAF for its recruitment functions at Biggin Hill from the 1960s. As such, the building is not an original part of the Chapel’s context, but is an office building of some modest architectural interest, and somewhat greater historic interest for standing as a reminder of the post-war functions of RAF Biggin Hill.

Unfortunately the building is abandoned and dilapidated, and no new use is expected. Although for its historic function it has some interest in relation to the Chapel — generations of new recruits would have paid tribute to their forbears at the Chapel while visiting the OASC for selection days — in its current condition it compromises the setting of the Chapel and especially the Memorial Garden, and so is at best an element of neutral significance.

The former RC chapel to the north, now in use by the Air Cadets.

Alan Baxter

N

Significance

Highly signifi cant Highly signifi cant Signifi cant

N

Signifi cant

Signifi cant garden Signifi cant garden Some signifi cance Some signifi cance Neutral

Neutral

Negative

Negative

Signifi cant view

Signifi cant view

Signifi cant relationship Signifi cant relationship Neutral relationship Neutral relationship

3.0 Significance

View of some signifi cance View of some signifi cance

BIGGIN HILL BIGGIN HILL STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE

SIGNIFICANCE SIGNIFICANCE

Alan Baxter

1711/200

1711/200

JULY 2015

JULY 2015 Baxter Alan

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

Alan Baxter

33

Appendix 1 HER map The map overleaf summarises the full Greater London Historic Environment Record dataset for Biggin Hill Dispersal Hut & RAF Chapel, held by Historic England, licensed to Alan Baxter Limited, and issued separately as an attachment to this report to LB Bromley.

Appendices

It is subject to the following statement of copyright and provenance: © Historic England [2015]. Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right [2015] The Dataset contained in this material was obtained on [27 April 2015].

Alan Baxter

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

35

±

541000

541500

542000

542500

GLHER Report 11714 Biggin Hll Airport RAF Chapel & Dispersal Hut TQ41714 60982 900m radius 27 April 2015

161500

161500

Archaeology

SitesFind Spot Archaeological "^ _Pottery Rivers

X Building 8 Listed Building Y TDP & TASBoroughs (Modern ë

Maritime Archaeology

Registered Parks & Gardens Scheduled Ancient Monuments

Archaeological Priority Area

161000

161000

Appendices

World Heritage Sites

Bromley

Event Location (Archaeology)

e !

Event Location (Not fully recorded on the GLSMR database) Requested Search Area

160500

160500

Scale (at A4): 1:10,000

36

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015 541000

541500

542000

542500

This map is based upon Ordnance Survey material with the permission of Ordnance Survey on behalf of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office. © Crown Copyright. Unauthorised reproduction infringes Crown Copyright and may lead to prosecution or civil proceedings. Historic England. 100019088. © Historic England. Historic OS Mapping: © and database right Crown Copyright and Landmark Information Group Ltd (all rights reserved) Licence numbers 000394 and TP0024.

Notes: Any Listed Building information shown on this map extract is provided solely to indicate the location of the listed building(s) and does not attempt to indicate the curtilage or the full extent of the listing(s).

Any archaeological priority area(s) shown on this map extract are those used by the Historic England archaeological advisors and

1 Waterhouse Square, 138-142 Holborn, London EC1N 2ST Tel: 020 7973 3000 Fax: 020 7973 3001 www.HistoricEngland.org.uk

Alan Baxter

Appendices

Appendix 2 Statutory List entries

Alan Baxter

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

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List Entry

St George’s Memorial Chapel List Entry

List Entry Summary

Asset Groupings

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.

This List entry does not comprise part of an Asset Grouping. Asset Groupings are not part of the official record but are added later for information.

Name: MEMORIAL CHAPEL List Entry Number: 1391588

List Entry Description

Location

Summary of Building

MEMORIAL CHAPEL, A233

Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

Reasons for Designation Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

Appendices

The building may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

County: Greater London Authority District: Bromley District Type: London Borough Parish:

National Park: Not applicable to this List entry.

Grade: II Date first listed: 01-Dec-2005 Date of most recent amendment: Not applicable to this List entry.

Legacy System Information The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System: LBS UID: 495981

http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391588&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 14:41:27]

History Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

Details

785/0/10082 A233 (WEST SIDE) FORMER RAF BIGGIN HILL 01-DEC-05 Memorial Chapel GV II Memorial chapel to airmen lost whilst flying from Biggin Hill in WWII. Consecrated 1951, architect W Wylton Todd ARIBA. Red brickwork in Flemish bond, clay Roman tile roof on steel trusses.

PLAN: A wide unaisled nave with sanctuary entered through a slightly narrower ante-room or narthex, both these gabled, the nave at a higher level. To the right (S) is an attached oblong campanile over the small entrance lobby, and beyond this is a flat-roofed sacristy. On the opposite (N) side a flat roofed set back link, formerly vestry, and a large gabled chapel, of later build.

EXTERIOR: The whole building is neatly detailed in brick with tiles, sills and with a continuous brick offset plinth. The W end, facing the road, is gabled, with a tall casement under a half-brick arch with tympanum in herring-bone brick, all set to a recessed blind arched panel, with a tile sill across the bottom. Roof tiles are brought to a close-cut eaves, carried out to flush moulded stone kneelers. Below the main panel is a panel set flush, and inscribed: 'This stone was laid on 25th July 1951 by Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding GCB GCVO CMG'. The returns each side have two tall casements, detailed as for the nave. The tower is in plain brickwork, with a set-back top stage, containing to each face a louvred opening, rectangular to the sides, and arched to front and rear, the ridge of the gabled roof parallel with the main roof. The W face has an open clock face; the main entrance is an arched opening in three recessed orders to a pair of framed diagonally boarded doors. To the right of the tower is the flat-roofed vestry, with triple steel casements to brick piers on the W and S sides. Left of the main gable is a similar flat-roofed unit, including triple light and arched doorway, now acting as a corridor link to the later chapel. The nave is a plain gabled rectangle with 5 tall oblong steel casements each side, and the blank E end, with verge and kneelers as to the W, and with a broad recessed blind panel to tiled sill. The large chapel to the N is detailed in a more complex way; to the W http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391588&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 14:41:27]

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St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

Alan Baxter

List Entry

Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details List Entry

is an arched doorway in recessed brick orders to half brick voussoirs and a pair of diagonally boarded doors, within a recessed panel including splayed jambs, taken to elaborate kneelers and eaves in three brick-onedge courses. In the gable is an oculus with double half-brick voussoirs. The returned side has blank recessed panels with a small vertical light. The E end has a sunk panel with elaborate quoins and to a weathered plinth, and a complex 'frieze' with prominent lead dressings.

INTERIOR: The ante-room or narthex has a plain parquet floor, unpainted walls in three bays with internal brick piers, and a fibre-boarded ceiling. This links through wide doors to the 6-bay nave, also in unpainted brick with internal piers, the floor in square laminated wood blocks, made from aircraft propellers, and with a near-flat ceiling in three facets. At the E end, in the simple sanctuary, is a broad memorial record panel; Squadron losses include Polish, East Indies, French, Dutch, RCAF and RZNA names.

Map National Grid Reference: TQ 41076 60603 The below map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale. For a copy of the full scale map, please see the attached PDF - 1391588.pdf - Please be aware that it may take a few minutes for the download to complete.

FITTINGS: In addition to the memorial reredos, there is a fine lectern, a stainless steel font with Y-shaped base, and simple benches. Windows each side of the nave all contain memorial stained glass.

HISTORY: This is an elegant little building, a simple and relatively austere version of a Lombardic Early Christian church, that stands as a memorial to those who lost their lives serving from Biggin Hill.

Biggin Hill acquired a reputation as the most famous fighter station in the world, primarily through its associations with the Battle of Britain, the first time in history that a nation had retained its freedom and independence through air power. It was developed as a key fighter station in the inter-war period, playing a critical role in the development of the air defence system - based on radar - that played a critical role in the Second World War. Of all the sites which became involved in The Battle of Britain, none have greater resonance in the popular imagination than those of the sector airfields within these Groups which bore the brunt of the Luftwaffe onslaught and, in Churchill's words, 'on whose organisation and combination the whole fighting power of our Air Force at this moment depended'. It was 11 Group, commanded by Air Vice Marshall Keith Park from his underground headquarters at RAF Uxbridge, which occupied the front line in this battle, with its 'nerve centre' sector stations at Northolt, North Weald, Biggin Hill, Tangmere, Debden and Hornchurch taking some of the most sustained attacks of the battle, especially between 24 August and 6 September when these airfields and later aircraft factories became the Luftwaffe's prime targets.

Appendices

Following the destruction by fire of a memorial chapel (converted from a hut in 1943 and dedicated to St George) in 1946, and consideration of whether to convert the bomb-damaged operations room into a chapel, architects from the Air Ministry Works Directorate (A Beasley, WS Harper and GA Williams) were commissioned to design a simple building in brick and tile, funded through a public appeal for (in Churchill's words) 'a permanent shrine of remembrance') backed by Churchill himself as well as friends and relatives of aircrew who had died in action. The chapel was constructed on the site of one of the hangars destroyed in 1940: Lord Dowding laid the foundation stone in July 1951, and it was opened and dedicated on 10 November 1951. Hugh Easton, the designer of the RAF Memorial Window in Westminster Abbey, designed twelve stained glass windows for the chapel, each with the winged spirit of a young pilot embracing in his arms a badge. The west window was installed in 1981 and four other windows in St George's Room installed

by Goddard and Gibbs in 1985 to commemmorate the role of ground support. The memorial tablet records the names of airmen lost from Biggin Hill, and illustrates the large number of nations whose pilots used the base.

© Crown Copyright and database right 2015. All rights reserved. Ordnance Survey Licence number 100024900. © British Crown and SeaZone Solutions Limited 2015. All rights reserved. Licence number 102006.006.

This copy shows the entry on 14-Jul-2015 at 02:40:35.

For further details of the history of the site, see description for Station Headquarters.

Selected Sources

http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391588&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 14:41:27]

List Entry

Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details14:41:27] http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391588&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015

Map National Grid Reference: TQ 41076 60603

Alan Baxter The below map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale. For a copy of the full scale

map, please see the attached PDF - 1391588.pdf - Please be aware that it may take a few minutes for the download to complete.

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

39

List Entry

Building 33 (former Station Headquarters) List Entry

List Entry Summary

Asset Groupings

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.

This List entry does not comprise part of an Asset Grouping. Asset Groupings are not part of the official record but are added later for information.

Name: BUILDING 33 (STATION HEADQUARTERS) List Entry Number: 1391587

List Entry Description

Location

Summary of Building

BUILDING 33 (STATION HEADQUARTERS), A233

Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

Reasons for Designation Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

Appendices

The building may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

County: Greater London Authority District: Bromley District Type: London Borough Parish:

National Park: Not applicable to this List entry.

Grade: II Date first listed: 01-Dec-2005 Date of most recent amendment: Not applicable to this List entry.

Legacy System Information The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System: LBS UID: 495980

http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391587&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 15:48:18]

History Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

Details

785/0/10087 WEST CAMP, A233 (EAST SIDE) FORMER RAF 01-DEC-05 BIGGIN HILL Building 33 (Station Headquarters) GV II Office block, formerly station headquarters building. Dated 1931, to Air Ministry Directorate of Works drawing no 1329/27. Red brickwork in stretcher bond to cavity walls, slate roof, leadwork to flat section.

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 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.

EXTERIOR: 2 storeys; 9-window front. Windows are timber glazing-bar sash set to slight reveals, to brick voussoir heads and concrete subsills. The front, in 9 bays, has the central 3 brought forward, and with a brick parapet taken above the continuous eaves-line. Windows are mainly with plain bottom sash and 6-pane upper, but full 12-pane have been inserted later in bay 4, ground floor, and bay, 9, first floor. A central pair of 3-panel doors on 2 steps is framed in a Portland stone surround with fine moulded architrave, plain pilasters to block bases, and modelled brackets to a heavy plain cornice to flat top and moulded edge; the frieze between the brackets is dated 'AD 1931'. The end returns are in 2 bays, all windows with plain lower sash, and the rear has 3 over 1 windows each side of the projecting flat-roofed section; those to the left are 12pane at first floor, and to the right 12-pane; to the ground floor single light only. The flat-roofed bay has a replacement light above door and small 4-pane, right, and a sash with plain lower light at each level, left; the rear wall has a central small light to the left of a square stack taken up to a brick capping. The double singlestorey range has four 12-pane to the long sides.

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St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

Alan Baxter

List Entry

A fascia with ogee gutter on a small soffit to a bed-mould is carried completely round the main block. Centred to the ridge is a square wooden turret with louvred sides and flat square leaded cupola; above the entrance is a short flat-staff, rising from the gutter level and braced to the parapet.

INTERIOR: Original joinery with panelled doors. Dogleg staircase with steel balustrade.

HISTORY: The building is located at the S end of the domestic site in West Camp, opposite the former Officers' Mess (qv). It is a characteristic example of early Expansion Period architecture and is externally almost unchanged, except for a small number of replacement sashes. It was the first building to be reoccupied after the devastation of the West Camp in the Battle of Britain.

Biggin Hill acquired a reputation as the most famous fighter station in the world, primarily through its associations with the Battle of Britain, the first time in history that a nation had retained its freedom and independence through air power. It was developed as a key fighter station in the inter-war period, playing a critical role in the development of the air defence system - based on radar - that played a critical role in the Second World War. Of all the sites which became involved in The Battle of Britain, none have greater resonance in the popular imagination than those of the sector airfields within these Groups which bore the brunt of the Luftwaffe onslaught and, in Churchill's words, 'on whose organisation and combination the whole fighting power of our Air Force at this moment depended'. It was 11 Group, commanded by Air Vice Marshall Keith Park from his underground headquarters at RAF Uxbridge, which occupied the front line in this battle, with its 'nerve centre' sector stations at Northolt, North Weald, Biggin Hill, Tangmere, Debden and Hornchurch taking some of the most sustained attacks of the battle, especially between 24 August and 6 September when these airfields and later aircraft factories became the Luftwaffe's prime targets. It relates to historic sites and fabric stretching from those used by the RAF to those used by or built especially for the Luftwaffe, including the now-protected sites at Paris Le Bourget and Deelen in the Netherlands.

Biggin Hill opened as a military landing ground in February 1914. From 1917 it functioned as a Radio Signals Unit and from February 1918 as a 'Home Defence Aerodrome' as part of London's air defence system. The first substantial group was erected on South Camp in 1917, when 80 acres were acquired from the Earl of Stanhope's estate. Only fragmentary remains date from this period, the significant surviving buildings mostly of 1930/31 - being located further north, in West Camp, and situated on each side of the main Bromley to Westerham road (the A 233). Work on rebuilding the station in permanent fabric begun in 1929, several buildings bearing datestones of 1930 and 1931 and the Air Estimates for 1933-4 showing that ?

190,000 had been allotted for this purpose. The surviving buildings are mostly representative of the type designs associated with Trenchard's Home Defence Expansion Scheme of 1923 onwards, the principal exception to this being the officers' mess. Biggin Hill had been the subject of pioneering air-to-air and ground-to-air experiments in radio communication and, crucially, how radar was to be integrated into an operationally-successful fighter defence system. During the critical Biggin Hill Experiment of 1938 the station was used as a laboratory for creating the Fighter Direction organisation, linking radar to defending aircraft.

The 1930s also saw Biggin Hill functioning as both a weather-reporting station on the Croydon-Le Bourget route, and a relief airport for Croydon. The runways, perimeter track and 12 blast pens were constructed on an enlarged airfield as part of Dowding's drive to provide dispersed and servicable flying fields on Fighter Command's front-line bases in 1939 (the runways completed in March 1940) , of which one intact and two partially-surviving blast pens survive in the north half of the site. Some pillboxes and an hydraulicallyoperated Pickett Hamilton fort have survived. The runways - which were augmented by a 1700-yard runway extending to the north and begun in March 1942 - form a 'V' instead of the more typical plan, in part due to the constricted nature of the site.

Few buildings have been demolished on the technical site since 1945, and the existing lacunae date from the raids on the site which caused such damage and loss of life during the Battle of Britain. The raid of the 30th of August resulted in considerable loss of life (39 dead and 26 wounded) in addition to severe damage

Biggin Hill's location south of London guaranteed its front-line involvement in fighter operations throughout the Second World War, from the Battle of France to the support of daylight raids by Bomber Command. In addition to sharing 'with Hornchurch the distinction of being the most bombed aerodrome in Fighter Command' (Ramsey, 67), it was regarded as Britain's principal fighter station. More enemy aircraft (1,400, including the first thousand by 1943) had been destroyed by squadrons based at Biggin Hill than any other airfield, and its 'aces' - including Michael Crossley, 'Sailor' Malan, Mungo park, A.C. Deere, Max Aitken and Brian Kingcome - became national figures, as well as the volunteers of the Free French and U.S. Eagle squadrons. 453 aircrew were killed while operating from Biggin Hill.

Biggin Hill's satellites were West Malling and Manston, with the former customs airport at Lympne serving as a landing strip. Like Kenley, it was sited within the balloon barrage erected around London as part of 'Operation Diver' between spring and October 1944. The main runway was then extended in 1957 for Hawker Hunter jets. The RAF ceased flying in 1959, after which the runways were transferred to civil control, and withdrew from the site in 1992. It was subsequent to this, and fears concerning the future of the site, that Bromley Borough Council, with the strong support of English Heritage and veterans' associations, designated the technical site and the former married quarters as a conservation area. The technical site is now mostly in the ownership of Formula One, and the married quarters - the best-preserved group of their type noted in the thematic survey - have now been sensitively developed for private housing. The former flying field is now used by Bromley Civil Airport. The RAF ceased flying in 1959, after which the runways were transferred to civil control (Bromley Civil Airport).

Wallace G, RAF Biggin Hill, 1957; Halliday P, 'Biggin Hill', in W.G. Ramsey (ed), The Battle of Britain Then and Now (5th edition, London, 1989), pp. 62-70; Operations Record Book, PRO AIR20/28/64; Churchill, W. The Second World War. Volume II: Their Finest Hour (London, 1949); Lake, J. and Schofield, J., 'Conservation and the Battle of Britain'. In The Burning Blue. A New History of the Battle of Britain, Addison, P. and Crang, J. (eds), 229-242 (London, 2000); Wood, D. and Dempster, D. The Narrow Margin (London, 1969)

Appendices

List Entry

to the barracks, WAAF quarters, workshops, stores and an 'F-type' Admiralty hangar. On the following day the Sector Operations Room took a direct hit and other hangars were badly damaged; on the 6th of September - after further raids had rendered much of the base unusable - the last surviving hangar was destroyed on orders of the base commander. With attacks switched to London throughout the autumn Blitz, there was some respite, but there was a prolonged daylight attack on the morning of October 2, and 4 days later another raid demolished three of the barracks blocks: Tangmere Block (Building 1) retains evidence of that period, when its left wing was damaged and reduced from two storeys to one. Several units of the married housing in Vincent Square were also destroyed.

Selected Sources Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details

Map National Grid Reference: TQ 41077 60496

http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391587&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 15:48:18]

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St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

41

List Entry

Appendices

The below map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale. For a copy of the full scale map, please see the attached PDF - 1391587.pdf - Please be aware that it may take a few minutes for the download to complete.

© Crown Copyright and database right 2015. All rights reserved. Ordnance Survey Licence number 100024900. © British Crown and SeaZone Solutions Limited 2015. All rights reserved. Licence number 102006.006.

This copy shows the entry on 14-Jul-2015 at 03:47:16.

http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391587&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 15:48:18]

42

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

Alan Baxter

List Entry

Building 15 (Hawkinge Block) List Entry

List Entry Summary

Asset Groupings

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.

This List entry does not comprise part of an Asset Grouping. Asset Groupings are not part of the official record but are added later for information.

Name: BUILDING 15, HAWKINGE BLOCK, WEST CAMP List Entry Number: 1391604

List Entry Description

Location

Summary of Building

BUILDING 15, HAWKINGE BLOCK, WEST CAMP, A233

Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

Reasons for Designation Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

County: Greater London Authority District: Bromley District Type: London Borough Parish:

National Park: Not applicable to this List entry.

Grade: II Date first listed: 01-Dec-2005 Date of most recent amendment: Not applicable to this List entry.

Legacy System Information The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System: LBS UID: 495996

http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391604&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 15:51:05]

History Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

Details

785/0/10108 A233 01-DEC-05 Former RAF Biggin Hill, Westerham (East side) Building 15, Hawkinge Block, West Camp GV II Barrack block. Dated 1934. By the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings. Dark red brickwork in stretcher bond, hipped (originally slate) concrete tile roof.

Appendices

The building may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

PLAN: Dormitory rooms on each side of central entrance and staircase.

EXTERIOR: Single-storey. Three 12-pane sashes each side of central entrance, flanking a central pair of 3panel doors in a cast stone heavy pilaster surround with moulded flat cornice Windows set to brick voussoirs, and with stooled sills. Roofs are all slightly swept to the box eaves with deep soffits. Six sashes to rear elevation. Smaller 8-pane sash to small service annexe to left of front.

INTERIOR: retains original doors and joinery.

HISTORY: This barracks block, constructed to designs established during the post-1923 expansion of the RAF, has been externally little-altered since the Second World War. Biggin Hill acquired a reputation as the most famous fighter station in the world, primarily through its associations with the Battle of Britain, the first time in history that a nation had retained its freedom and independence through air power. It was developed as a key fighter station in the inter-war period, playing a critical role in the development of the air defence system - based on radar - that played a critical role in the Second World War. Of all the sites which became involved in The Battle of Britain, none have greater resonance in the popular imagination than those of the sector airfields within these Groups which bore the http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391604&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 15:51:05]

Alan Baxter

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

43

For further details of the history of the site, see advice and description for Station Headquarters.

Selected Sources Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details List Entry

brunt of the Luftwaffe onslaught and, in Churchill's words, 'on whose organisation and combination the whole fighting power of our Air Force at this moment depended'. It was 11 Group, commanded by Air Vice Marshall Keith Park from his underground headquarters at RAF Uxbridge, which occupied the front line in this battle, with its 'nerve centre' sector stations at Northolt, North Weald, Biggin Hill, Tangmere, Debden and Hornchurch taking some of the most sustained attacks of the battle, especially between 24 August and 6 September when these airfields and later aircraft factories became the Luftwaffe's prime targets.

For further details of the history of the site, see advice and description for Station Headquarters.

Map National Grid Reference: TQ 41140 60760 The below map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale. For a copy of the full scale map, please see the attached PDF - 1391604.pdf - Please be aware that it may take a few minutes for the download to complete.

List Entry

Selected Sources Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details

Map

Appendices

National Grid Reference: TQ 41140 60760 The below map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale. For a copy of the full scale map, please see the attached PDF - 1391604.pdf - Please be aware that it may take a few minutes for the download to complete.

© Crown Copyright and database right 2015. All rights reserved. Ordnance http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391604&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 15:51:05]Survey

Licence number 100024900. © British Crown and SeaZone Solutions Limited 2015. All rights reserved. Licence number 102006.006.

This copy shows the entry on 14-Jul-2015 at 03:50:38.

http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391604&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 15:51:05]

44

Alan Baxter

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015 http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391604&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 15:51:05]

List Entry

Building 12 (Candidates’ Club, former Sergeants’ Mess) List Entry

List Entry Summary

Asset Groupings

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.

This List entry does not comprise part of an Asset Grouping. Asset Groupings are not part of the official record but are added later for information.

Name: BUILDING 12 (CANDIDATES CLUB, FORMER SERGEANTS MESS), WEST CAMP List Entry Number: 1391606 Location BUILDING 12 (CANDIDATES CLUB, FORMER SERGEANTS MESS), WEST CAMP, A233

List Entry Description Summary of Building Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

Reasons for Designation Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

History

County: Greater London Authority District: Bromley District Type: London Borough Parish:

Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

National Park: Not applicable to this List entry.

785/0/10109 A233 01-DEC-05 Former RAF Biggin Hill, Westerham (East side) Building 12 (Candidate's Club, Former Sergeant's' Mess), West Camp

Grade: II Date first listed: 01-Dec-2005 Date of most recent amendment: Not applicable to this List entry.

Legacy System Information The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System: LBS UID: 495998

http://list.historicengland.org.uk/...owText=1http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391606&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 16:06:45]

Details

GV II Sergeants' Mess. 1932. By the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings. Drawing No 191/24 and 2897/35. Stretcher bond cavity red brick walls, slate roof on timber trusses.

Appendices

The building may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

PLAN: A single-storey building with entrance off-centre, right, and with gabled wing projecting forward to right. The layout had the billiard room to the right of the entrance and the mess, with external eaves stack, to the left; kitchen and services to rear.

EXTERIOR: Windows are generally timber-bar sashes to stone sills and with brick voussoir heads. On the S, entrance front, the projecting gable has a 8:12:8-pane triple sash to flat voussoir heads, under a flush semicircular arch containing a flush tympanum in herring-bone brickwork. Above these is a small ventilation slit, then the shouldered gable with stone copings. The inner returns have a small sash, then the set-back long front has a central square bay with tall 8:12:8-pane sash to brick mullions, and a small 8-pane on the returns, the bay taken up to a coped parapet above eaves level. To its left is the external eaves stack, taken up to a bold brick capping, flanked by tall 8-pane sashes, and with two 12-pane sashes to left. To the right is a pair of panelled doors, the top panel glazed, in a cast stone heavy pilaster surround with simple architrave flat cornice, again flanked by tall sashes.

The left return has 12-pane sashes, and the rear gable is as to the front; the right return has a part-hipped outer end under a louvred half-gable, then a lower, set-back wing to a hipped end, connected to a wall bounding the service yard, and a hipped wing to rear left. Small 1970s additional bay to left of front.

http://list.historicengland.org.uk/...owText=1http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391606&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 16:06:45]

Alan Baxter

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

45

For further details of the history of the site, see advice and description for Station Headquarters.

Selected Sources Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details List Entry

INTERIOR: not inspected.

Map

HISTORY: This sergeants' mess, constructed to designs established during the post-1923 expansion of the RAF, has been externally little-altered since the Second World War and relates to a rank of airmen that played a key role in military aviation in the Second World War.

National Grid Reference: TQ 41176 60757

Biggin Hill acquired a reputation as the most famous fighter station in the world, primarily through its associations with the Battle of Britain, the first time in history that a nation had retained its freedom and independence through air power. It was developed as a key fighter station in the inter-war period, playing a critical role in the development of the air defence system - based on radar - that played a critical role in the Second World War. Of all the sites which became involved in The Battle of Britain, none have greater resonance in the popular imagination than those of the sector airfields within these Groups which bore the brunt of the Luftwaffe onslaught and, in Churchill's words, 'on whose organisation and combination the whole fighting power of our Air Force at this moment depended'. It was 11 Group, commanded by Air Vice Marshall Keith Park from his underground headquarters at RAF Uxbridge, which occupied the front line in this battle, with its 'nerve centre' sector stations at Northolt, North Weald, Biggin Hill, Tangmere, Debden and Hornchurch taking some of the most sustained attacks of the battle, especially between 24 August and 6 September when these airfields and later aircraft factories became the Luftwaffe's prime targets.

The below map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale. For a copy of the full scale map, please see the attached PDF - 1391606.pdf - Please be aware that it may take a few minutes for the download to complete.

List Entry

Appendices

For further details of the history of the site, see advice and description for Station Headquarters.

Selected Sources

http://list.historicengland.org.uk/...owText=1http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391606&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 16:06:45]

Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details

Map National Grid Reference: TQ 41176 60757 The below map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale. For a copy of the full scale map, please see the attached PDF - 1391606.pdf - Please be aware that it may take a few minutes for the download to complete.

© Crown Copyright and database right 2015. All rights reserved. Ordnance Survey Licence number 100024900. © British Crown and SeaZone Solutions Limited 2015. All rights reserved. Licence number 102006.006.

This copy shows the entry on 14-Jul-2015 at 04:06:17.

http://list.historicengland.org.uk/...owText=1http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391606&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 16:06:45]

46

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

Alan Baxter http://list.historicengland.org.uk/...owText=1http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391606&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 16:06:45]

List Entry

Building 10 (Junior Ranks’ Mess, former Airmen’s Institute) List Entry

List Entry Summary This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.

Name: BUILDING 10 (Junior Ranks Mess, former Airmen's Institute) List Entry Number: 1416723 Location Building 10 (Junior Ranks Mess, former Airmen's Institute), West Camp, Former RAF Biggin Hill, A233 (East Side)

Summary of Building Airmen's Institute and recreation centre, with dining room. c1926 design, built 1930. By the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings. Brick with gabled slate roofs and brick stacks.

PLAN: Rectangular main block, with dining room, card, writing and games rooms, the kitchen and ancillary rooms linked to the rear.

EXTERIOR: 2 storeys. Gauged brick flat arches over all window openings, replacement windows to front and steel-framed windows to rear. Front has 3-window outer wings, the gable ends of which are expressed as broken pediments and the ground floors with panelled double doors with overlights set in rendered architraves with bracketed flat hoods. The central 8-window range has two inserted ground-floor doorways, the second bays in being heightened to break the eaves line with small hipped roofs. 4-window return elevations. The rear service ranges with various casements at both levels.

INTERIOR: Little original detail survives later remodelling; dog leg stairs.

The building may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

Legacy Record – This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

County: Greater London Authority District: Bromley District Type: London Borough Parish: Non Civil Parish

History

National Park: Not applicable to this List entry.

Grade: II Date first listed: 01-Dec-2005 Date of most recent amendment: Not applicable to this List entry.

Asset Groupings This List entry does not comprise part of an Asset Grouping. Asset Groupings are not part of the official record but are added later for information.

HISTORY: This institute building, constructed in 1930 to designs established during the post-1923 expansion of the RAF, was one of the principal barracks buildings at this internationally renowned historic fighter base, complementing the Officers' Mess which lay across the main road that passes through the site.

Details Biggin Hill acquired a reputation as the most famous fighter station in the world, primarily through its associations with the Battle of Britain, the first time in history that a nation had retained its freedom and independence through air power. It was developed as a key fighter station in the inter-war period, playing a critical role in the development of the air defence system - based on radar - that played a critical role in the Second World War. Of all the sites which became involved in The Battle of Britain, none have greater resonance in the popular imagination than those of the sector airfields within these Groups which bore the brunt of the Luftwaffe onslaught and, in Churchill's words, 'on whose organisation and combination the whole fighting power of our Air Force at this moment depended'. It was 11 Group, commanded by Air Vice Marshall Keith Park from his underground headquarters at RAF Uxbridge, which occupied the front line in this battle, with its 'nerve centre' sector stations at Northolt, North Weald, Biggin Hill, Tangmere, Debden and Hornchurch taking some of the most sustained attacks of the battle, especially between 24 August and 6 September when these airfields and later aircraft factories became the Luftwaffe's prime targets.

Appendices

Reasons for Designation

For further details of the history of the site, see advice and description for Station Headquarters.

List Entry Description

Selected Sources None.

http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1416723&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 16:10:13]

http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1416723&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 16:10:13]

Alan Baxter

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

47

List Entry

Map National Grid Reference: TQ4119960816

Appendices

The below map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale. For a copy of the full scale map, please see the attached PDF - 1416723.pdf - Please be aware that it may take a few minutes for the download to complete.

© Crown Copyright and database right 2015. All rights reserved. Ordnance Survey Licence number 100024900. © British Crown and SeaZone Solutions Limited 2015. All rights reserved. Licence number 102006.006.

This copy shows the entry on 14-Jul-2015 at 04:09:42.

http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1416723&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 16:10:13]

48

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

Alan Baxter

List Entry

Buildings 1 to 5 (Airmen’s Barrack Blocks) List Entry

List Entry Summary

Asset Groupings

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.

This List entry does not comprise part of an Asset Grouping. Asset Groupings are not part of the official record but are added later for information.

Name: BUILDINGS 1 TO 5 (AIRMENS BARRACK BLOCKS) List Entry Number: 1391589

List Entry Description

Location

Summary of Building

BUILDINGS 1 TO 5 (AIRMENS BARRACK BLOCKS), A233

Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

Reasons for Designation Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

County: Greater London Authority District: Bromley District Type: London Borough Parish:

National Park: Not applicable to this List entry.

Grade: II Date first listed: 01-Dec-2005 Date of most recent amendment: Not applicable to this List entry.

Legacy System Information The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System: LBS UID: 495982

http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391589&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 16:13:07]

History Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

Details

785/0/10084 WEST CAMP, A233 (EAST SIDE) FORMER RAF 01-DEC-05 BIGGIN HILL Buildings 1 to 5 (Airmen's barrack blo cks) GV II Group of five airmen's barracks blocks. 1930, to Air Ministry Directorate of Works drawings 99-109/23.

Red brickwork in stretcher and Flemish bond to cavity walls, slate roofs.

Appendices

The building may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

PLAN: Two rows of gabled two-storey long frontage buildings with central pediment and entry, with a short T-arm central to the rear, at slightly lower eaves and ridge level, and to hipped outer end. Central lobby and staircase flanked by small rooms for NCO's, then dormitories for 64 airmen; the rear wing with ablutions and services. Building 04 (Croydon) is larger, accommodating 80 airmen.

EXTERIOR: Buildings were originally identical (except for 04); the most fully retained externally being Building 05 (Manston). Windows are generally wooden glazing-bar sashes set in slight reveals, with brick voussoir heads and concrete sub-sills. The long front has a 3-bay centre slightly stepped forward to an open pediment. A central feature in painted concrete has a part-glazed panelled door with 5-pane overlight, on two steps, with pilasters to a simple architrave and cornice; above this a 12-pane sash in flat architrave surround flared out and on a blocking-course below, and to a central keystone. To each side are 8-pane sashes at each level, in brick panels brought forward from the central panel, and the eaves/pediment mould broken to the centre. A small ventilation slit in the head of the gable. To each side are 4 bays of 12-pane sashes, grouped 1:2:1. Small brick stacks flank the centre unit. The gabled returns are also treated as open pediments with short returns of the eaves moulding, with a single 12-pane to each floor, and ventilation slit at the head of the gable. The rear has four 12-pane and one 8-pane to each floor, on either side of the wing which has two broad 4-pane and a narrow 8-pane on one side, a paired sash and a similar opening faced with glass block to leave level, and an 8-pane above a blocked door to the other. The outer end has two http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391589&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 16:13:07]

Alan Baxter

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

49

For further details of the history of the site, see description for Station Headquarters.

Selected Sources Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details List Entry

small sashes above one and a flush door with 4-pane over-light or louvres. A small box eaves on a bedmould is carried round the whole.

VARIATIONS: Building 01 (Tangmere) has one storey only to left of centre, the result of aerial bombing in 1940, and the rear has two blocked openings and no glass block fill. Building 02 (Kenley) has smaller plain sashes in rebuilt jambs in bays 8 - 11 upper floor, front and bays 1 - 3 upper floor, rear. The service wing has to the rear plain casements, and the window above the door (with louvres) has been blocked in brick.

Building 04 (Croydon) has 5 bays each side of centre, with 3-bay returned ends in 8-pane sashes, but the ground floor sash to bay 1 at the front is replaced by a steel casement, and on the left return steel replacements flank a blocked centre light to the ground floor. The service wing has slit windows each side, but retains 6-pane sashes to the outer end.

Map National Grid Reference: TQ 41269 60861, TQ 41288 60833, TQ 41307 60914, TQ 41321 60862, TQ 41337 60895 List Entry The below map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale. For a copy of the full scale map, please see the attached PDF - 1391589.pdf - Please be aware that it may take a few minutes for the http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391589&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 16:13:07] download to complete.

INTERIORS: original joinery including panelled doors. Dog leg staircases with simple steel balustrades.

Appendices

HISTORY: The buildings are located at the north end of the domestic site, and immediately adjacent to the public highway (A 233), set in two parallel rows, following the curve in the road. In view of the many sustained attacks on the base, especially in the Battle of Britain, these buildings are surprisingly well retained; the loss of an upper floor to part of Tangmere block, however, is a poignant reminder of that period.

This barracks format was devised in 1923, during the Trenchard Home Defence years, and developed with minor variations and extensions until the introduction of the 'H'-plan after 1938.

Biggin Hill acquired a reputation as the most famous fighter station in the world, primarily through its associations with the Battle of Britain, the first time in history that a nation had retained its freedom and independence through air power. It was developed as a key fighter station in the inter-war period, playing a critical role in the development of the air defence system - based on radar - that played a critical role in the Second World War. Of all the sites which became involved in The Battle of Britain, none have greater resonance in the popular imagination than those of the sector airfields within these Groups which bore the brunt of the Luftwaffe onslaught and, in Churchill's words, 'on whose organisation and combination the whole fighting power of our Air Force at this moment depended'. It was 11 Group, commanded by Air Vice Marshall Keith Park from his underground headquarters at RAF Uxbridge, which occupied the front line in this battle, with its 'nerve centre' sector stations at Northolt, North Weald, Biggin Hill, Tangmere, Debden and Hornchurch taking some of the most sustained attacks of the battle, especially between 24 August and 6 September when these airfields and later aircraft factories became the Luftwaffe's prime targets.

For further details of the history of the site, see description for Station Headquarters.

Selected Sources Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details

© Crown Copyright and database right 2015. All rights reserved. Ordnance Survey Licence number 100024900. © British Crown and SeaZone Solutions Limited 2015. All rights reserved. Licence number 102006.006.

This copy shows the entry on 14-Jul-2015 at 04:12:45.

Map National Grid Reference: TQ 41269 60861, TQ 41288 60833, TQ 41307 60914, TQ 41321 60862, TQ 41337 60895

http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391589&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 16:13:07]

50

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391589&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 16:13:07]

Alan Baxter

List Entry

6, 7 and 8 Vincent Square (Married Quarters) List Entry

List Entry Summary

Asset Groupings

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.

This List entry does not comprise part of an Asset Grouping. Asset Groupings are not part of the official record but are added later for information.

Name: 9-12 VINCENT SQUARE AT FORMER RAF BIGGIN HILL List Entry Number: 1391596

List Entry Description

Location

Summary of Building

9-12 VINCENT SQUARE AT FORMER RAF BIGGIN HILL, A 233

Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

Reasons for Designation Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

County: Greater London Authority District: Bromley District Type: London Borough Parish:

National Park: Not applicable to this List entry.

Grade: II Date first listed: 01-Dec-2005 Date of most recent amendment: Not applicable to this List entry.

Legacy System Information The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System: LBS UID: 495989

History Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

Details WESTERHAM 771/0/10082 A 233 01-DEC-05 (West side) 9-12 Vincent Square at Former RAF Bigg in Hill GV II Terrace of four houses, part of group of 26. Dated 1929, by the Air Ministry's Directorate of Worlds and Buildings. Painted brickwork, cavity walls, slate roofs, lead to bay windows.

Appendices

The building may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

PLAN: A short straight terrace in two storeys, hipped roof to right and gable to the left. Each dwelling entered to the right, with living, dining and kitchen ground floor, and three bedrooms; originally with four open fireplaces, two to each floor, on party wall to left. Terrace lies to W side of the Square near the N end.

EXTERIOR: Windows generally plain wooden sash, in half-brick reveals and to concrete sub-sills. At first floor four windows, separated by narrow brick piers, and the outer lights narrower than the centre; below these a canted flat-roofed bay, with brick mullions, large central and smaller side-lights. To the right, on two steps a flush panelled door with square glazed top panel, under a flat concrete hood with roll-mould edge, and on concrete brackets. Large ridge stacks, to the left of each house, and end stack to the left; the stacks have deep stepped cappings.

End returns are plain, and the back has a double sash with brick mullion to the first floor, above a large replacement casement, a door L and a small side light. Datestone with carved date '1929'. Simple eaves to three sides and clipped gable verge to left.

INTERIOR: Not inspected; the houses restored by a Housing Association as part of the renovation of the whole Square.

http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391596&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 16:16:30]

HISTORY: This forms part of the best preserved group of married quarters, typically designed on Garden http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391596&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 16:16:30]

Alan Baxter

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

51

List Entry

City principles, that predate the post-1934 Expansion Period of the RAF and relate to a nationally important historic aviation site. They are dated 1929, six of the houses having been demolished following the 1940 raids but still presenting a group of 26 planned as an elongated square around a central grassed area. Land for the new married quarters had been purchased in 1923-5.

Selected Sources Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details

Map National Grid Reference: TQ 41099 60946

Appendices

The below map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale. For a copy of the full scale map, please see the attached PDF - 1391596.pdf - Please be aware that it may take a few minutes for the download to complete.

© Crown Copyright and database right 2015. All rights reserved. Ordnance Survey Licence number 100024900.

List Entry © British Crown and SeaZone Solutions Limited 2015. All rights reserved. Licence number 102006.006. http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1391596&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 16:16:30] This copy shows the entry on 14-Jul-2015 at 04:16:07.

52

St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

Alan Baxter

List Entry

Former Officers’ Mess List Entry

List Entry Summary

Asset Groupings

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.

This List entry does not comprise part of an Asset Grouping. Asset Groupings are not part of the official record but are added later for information.

Name: FORMER OFFICERS MESS, RAF BIGGIN HILL List Entry Number: 1186840

List Entry Description

Location

Summary of Building

FORMER OFFICERS MESS, RAF BIGGIN HILL, MAIN ROAD

Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

Reasons for Designation Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

County: Greater London Authority District: Bromley District Type: London Borough Parish:

National Park: Not applicable to this List entry.

Grade: II Date first listed: 21-Mar-1994 Date of most recent amendment: Not applicable to this List entry.

Legacy System Information The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System: LBS UID: 358671

History Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

Details The following building shall be added: WESTERHAM MAIN ROAD TQ 46 SW (west side) 785-/12/10003 former officers' mess, RAF Biggin Hill II

Appendices

The building may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

Officers' mess, circa 1935, possibly designed by S Bullock FRIBA who designed several Air Ministry buildings, including a smaller but comparable mess dated 1934. Neo-Baroque style. Built of red brick with stone dressings and hipped slate roof with brick chimneystacks. Comprises a three-storey centre block with two-storey end blocks. Central block has projecting central three bays with sash windows, band below second floor and stone semi-circular entrance porch with Tuscan columns and stone balustrading. Flanking parts of 5 bays each with mainly glazing bar sashes and pedimented projection with oculus through ground and first floor attached to ground floor flat-roofed portion attached to projecting two-storey wings. Rear elevation has projecting three-storey, nine-bay central section with band below second floor, 12-pane sashes and central first floor round-headed staircase window over pilastered doorcase. Two storey 5 bay wings on either side. Large flat-roofed later C20 extension on right hand side. Interior has central well staircase with turned balusters, some round-headed alcoves, oak panelling and 6-panelled doors. One of the largest and most elaborate RAF officers' messes, and the building with most architectural merit at RAF Biggin Hill, the most famous of the Battle of Britain airfields.

Listing NGR: TQ4098660614

http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1186840&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 16:20:12]

Selected Sources

List Entry

Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1186840&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 16:20:12]

Map National Grid Reference: TQ 40986 60614

Alan Baxter

The below map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale. For a copy of the full scale St George’s Memorial Biggin Statement Significance July 2015 map, please see the attached PDF - 1186840.pdf - Please Chapel, be aware thatHill it may take aoffew minutes /for the download to complete.

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List Entry

Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details

Map National Grid Reference: TQ 40986 60614

Appendices

The below map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale. For a copy of the full scale map, please see the attached PDF - 1186840.pdf - Please be aware that it may take a few minutes for the download to complete.

© Crown Copyright and database right 2015. All rights reserved. Ordnance Survey Licence number 100024900. © British Crown and SeaZone Solutions Limited 2015. All rights reserved. Licence number 102006.006.

This copy shows the entry on 14-Jul-2015 at 04:19:52.

http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle_print.aspx?uid=1186840&showMap=1&showText=1[14/07/2015 16:20:12]

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St George’s Memorial Chapel, Biggin Hill Statement of Significance / July 2015

Alan Baxter

Alan Baxter Prepared by Alfie Stroud and Kit Wedd Reviewed by Vicky Simon Draft issued June 2015 Final issued July 2015 T:\1711\1711-200\12 DTP Data\2015-06_Chapel_Statement of Significance\1711-200_St George's Memorial Chapel_Statement of Significance.indd

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