Bentley Priory Museum – Educational Video Units

RAF Bentley Priory is most famous for operating as Fighter Command in 1940 during the Battle of Britain. Bentley Priory Museum is dedicated to preserving and sharing this history with visitors.

Several permanent exhibits cover every aspect of the Battle of Britain – the four-month long struggle to deny Nazi Germany air superiority over the United Kingdom. It took a formidable group of men and women working here to help co-ordinate the RAF response, working within a Filter Room where information received from radar stations along the coast would be analysed before being relayed to Operations Rooms across the country. All part of the world’s first integrated system of air defence, known as ‘The Dowding System’.

We worked with Bentley Priory Museum who had recreated a Filter Room, building bespoke timber video screens that match the map table where men and women would chart the action unfolding over Britain’s skies. One screen instructs a visitor on how air raids were plotted on the table and takes them step by step through the process as they learn how to do it themselves. A second screen shows a film of veterans recalling their memories of the Filter Room.

Built into each of these bespoke casings is our Open Frame Screen, programmed with ease via USB to play the instructional content created by the Museum. The instructional unit offers button controls so users can move forwards and back through the video and more easily follow the steps to plot air raids. Although using our modern headphone hanger recreations of the style of headphone that would have been used at the time were sourced in order to aid visitor immersion.

Elsewhere in the exhibition you’ll find another simple timber unit with a 24″ Screen which displays looping documentary footage – helping give visitors a better idea of the people involved in The Dowding System and how heroic a job those people stationed here (and all over the UK) did in order to turn back the tide.

With the growing gap between the present day and the WWII era, it’s easy to take our technology for granted. What would now be achieved by computers and satellites, then had to be done by hundreds of people working tirelessly in tandem. This engaging visitor experience helps educate new generations on the processes used at the time and provide a small insight into the kind of pressures faced.