With reference to the story on Hendon RAF Museum: (Fitting end for fighting Dakota') I would like to make the following corrective comments.

The structure (often misleadingly described as the Grahame-White factory) was the eastern end of a First World War aircraft factory frontage that extended in an unbroken line to a mirror image of that structure behind the Grade II-listed officers mess which is now refurbished as the Middlesex University's Writtle Hall.

The Grade II-listed building that formed the factory spine with the airfield watch office/control tower remains abandoned to the effects of weather and vandalism.

Only the steel elements (for example, doors and roof supports) will be relocated; the brick southern and eastern elevations will be replaced. So when does relocation of a Grade II-listed building become replication?

The Dakota itself was not built by the US Air Force but by the Douglas Corporation in the USA, initially as a pre-Second World War civil airliner.

Dave Clucas

Salcome Gardens, Mill Hill

July 16, 2002 16:00