Bentley Priory Museum, aviation museum in Stanmore, London Borough of Harrow, United Kingdom
Bentley Priory Museum is an aviation museum housed in an 18th-century Grade II* listed mansion in Stanmore, on the north-west edge of London. The building has white stone walls, large windows and a long frontage, with adjoining rooms that were once offices and a central staircase.
The house was chosen in 1936 as the headquarters of RAF Fighter Command, led by Sir Hugh Dowding. During the Second World War, it became the nerve centre where the Dowding System combined radar and ground reports to direct fighter aircraft.
Inside, the museum keeps the rooms close to how they looked when Royal Air Force officers worked there, with desks, maps and communications equipment. A visit to the Filter Room shows how radar information was received and passed on, giving a direct sense of the daily work during the Battle of Britain.
Reaching the museum is simple by car or public transport, and there is parking on site. The rooms are on one main level with wide corridors, which makes moving through the exhibits easier for visitors with limited mobility.
The Filter Room at Bentley Priory was the first place in the world where incoming radar plots from across the country could be compared on one table to form a single picture of the sky. Visitors can stand in that same room and follow the coloured markers that moved across the map during a raid.
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