Bentley Priory

 

To Bentley Priory, headquarters of RAF Fighter Command during WWII. The RAF moved out in 2008 and the main building houses private apartments. The central part is a museum. 

We were lucky on the day we visited. The car park was almost empty and so we had the museum virtually to ourselves, after  lunch sitting in the sun on a terrace overlooking the garden at the rear of the building. Britain's effective defence against air attack in WWII was 'The Dowding System' where planes were plotted using combined inputs from Chain Home station's radar and Observer Corps' sightings which enabled controllers to get defending fighters in the correct place to meet attackers.

The first plotting room has been reconstructed in its original room, with resin statues modelled on the real personnel.

A huge underground bunker was constructed in the grounds, and the plotting room moved there for safety. It was extended and adapted during the Cold War.

The first Commander-in-Chief of Fighter Command was Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding. We saw an excellent AV presentation in his office, and we told that in the 1969 film Battle of Britain, with Laurence Olivier portraying  Dowding, was shot in Bentley Priory.

Dowding's office overlooks the rear garden and is behind the pillars on the right of the photo. At the end of the movie he steps out onto the balcony behind the pillars and the garden with its fountain is shown. But the scene where Dowding looks out from his office at the red sky from  bombed burning London was not possible, we were told, as the rear of Bentley Priory doesn't look towards London.