the Trust’s NAAFI kitchen revealed

On Friday (20th June), the Trust’s clearing team finally finished transferring all our shelving and boxes of finds from the store room at Roman Circus House into our new storage building. It was hard work and it took a couple of weeks, but the store room is now empty (and the new storage building is looking pretty full…). We were pleased when we managed to pack all our finds into the store room last year – having already sent a load of archaeological material to the Colchester and Ipswich Museums Service for permanent storage – but now we have a new large room to expand the circus centre into.

Roman Circus House was built in 1937 as the Regimental Institute of the Artillery (Le Cateau) Barracks of Colchester’s old garrison. It was built to house the barracks NAAFI, or the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes, which is an independent organisation founded in 1921 to provide social, catering and other facilities and services to the Services. New NAAFIs were built in the 1930s – for example, at least three were built at Colchester garrison, including ours – to improve living conditions in the Services so that large numbers of personnel could be recruited in the build-up to WW2. It is a very well-designed building, and designed to provide a social space for a large number of people – so it is very suitable as a Roman circus centre!

Our store room was originally the kitchen of the NAAFI. It is on the ground-floor and it is almost a single-storey annexe to the main block, with a large chimney-breast, and lit by two windows and a skylight. It originally had a large arched doorway into the servery, a very tall door to the back yard and, possibly, a side door to the service rooms (the scullery and larders). Later on, the arched doorway was blocked in, and the walls – including the tiled parts – were covered with a paint-effect wallpaper. The kitchen still has its original 1937 Crittall windows with brass fittings, as in the public rooms of the building. The NAAFI was a very interesting place where, during WW2, the all-male personnel of the Royal Field Artillery interacted with the probably all-female staff of the NAAFI, and where the men could enjoy various leisure activities such as socialising, sharing a beer, buying cigarettes and other essentials, consuming cups of tea, cakes and light meals, playing board games, reading the papers, attending dances, etc.

Roman Circus House was used as the barracks NAAFI throughout WW2 and for some years after that, before being converted for use as the garrison Education Centre. When it ceased to have this function, it was left empty for several years and fell into a state of dilapidation. Since the Trust moved in, on the 1st June 2012, the building has undergone a major programme of renovation, largely undertaken by our team of renovation volunteers. The store room will now be renovated and then it will be opened to visitors as the ‘archaeology in action’ room, where our archaeology volunteers will process pottery and other finds, and visitors will be able to watch and have a chat with the volunteers at work.

Clearing out our store room has been like an archaeological process, with the archaeological material being removed all over again, this time to reveal the historic barracks NAAFI kitchen.

The Roman circus site and centre are open every weekday, 10.30am-4.30pm. Entry is free.

The images show the store room at the end of the day on Friday, all cleared out and looking very like an empty NAAFI kitchen, and a close-up of the wallpaper.

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